An eccentric billionaire chose to marry near Niagara Falls ten years ago. This event meant so much to him that, over a decade, he founded and built a genuine city of marriage ceremonies and honeymoons, just near the famous falls.
Weddings are officiated within a building as long as a boulevard, with 50 parked limousines.
“It is a small town populated with newly weds, full of entertainment and fun,” Alin Caraman, the director of the only company in Bucharest dealing with weddings organising, says.
When he decided to establish Bon Mariage agency, six months ago, he was largely inspired by the American experience, as organising weddings is a genuine industry there.
This business is in an incipient stage in Romania, but Bon Mariage, an icebreaker in this field, hopes that a market of wedding service providers will build up over the next years. It would imply competitors, while customers should gradually rely on the services provided by agencies.
Caraman says that people are usually reluctant to resort to agencies, as the Romanians think they are skilled at organising anything, including their own weddings.
Mentality is different abroad, namely people think that they should focus only on what they are good at. The prejudice that agencies charge high fees is prevailing in Romania. People should rely on experienced and skilled professionals, which are paid for what they actually do best.
“It is hard to be safe with wedding organising, as there are a lot of traps involved; suppliers usually do not think in the long term, they know that a wedding only happens once, so they try to rob customers,” says Caraman.
For instance, he says, one may go to a restaurant and negotiate a price, but at midnight, when the wedding reception is over, the suppliers claim a higher price.
Bon Mariage has solved this problem by choosing several suppliers that have passed the quality-price exam: “they are neither the cheapest, nor the most expensive, they are the best.
We may organise five-star wedding receptions, but we also deal with situations when the customers do not have so much money. The most important thing is their satisfaction, even if, from the very beginning, we inform them that caviar and special wines are not included in that price.”
The company is in charge with checking the suppliers’ performance. If a couple decides to completely rely on Bon Mariage, a representative of the company supervises the dining, and if the restaurant is proved to have “poured water into the wine,” the company will no longer recommend it.
Caraman says Bon Mariage has been requested to organise weddings outside Bucharest. According to him, there is no other similar business in Romania.
The company also has a web site and a lot of requests are received from abroad. Thus, a genuine on-line counselling has come into being: the customers send their suggestions and the company provides them with solutions.
“They want everything to have been properly organised before coming in Romania, usually one or two weeks ahead of the wedding day.”