YA(Tipping)T: Am I supposed to tip the servers at the wedding?

[Zeze]

My catering company's contract says the price includes about 8 servers, 1 busboy, & 1 maitre'd.

Are they paid a flat wage for working events? If they're not (I doubt), then should I give them a tip? If so, how much?

 

[KeithTalent]

We gave an envelope with some dough in it to the guy in charge and told him to disperse to the entire serving crew. Way too busy that day to deal with tipping everyone separately. Had envelopes made up for all tippable service people and all people we actually needed to pay, a few days prior to make the day easier.

KT

 

[Meractik]

Nobody is going to turn down your tip if you offer it. However... being that its for a wedding you are already guaranteed to be paying a premium for the services since they know they can gouge you (aka wedding prices are not the same as exact same services for other events... they're marked up *sometimes by a lot*)

 

[kranky]

Yes, wedding stuff is always marked up, but the workers don't get paid anything extra. Tips are appropriate for people serving at the reception (I'm not sure about the bartenders, as they typically have their own tip jars at the ready). About $20 each ought to be fair.

 

[Axon]

I was a server/Cocktail guy at a catering hall in NYC for a year, and at least at that place, we never got any of an "umbrella" tip offered by the patron. The maitre'd pocketed that.

If a guest in our section tipped (we worked in 5 person teams - 5 tables per team), we would pool those tips and split them amongst the team. It lead to rampant hiding of tips amongst workers. Wedding guest tipped decently. Pretty much no one else would.

Oh, and at least where I was, we did receive a modest pay check paid by the shift. I believe it was $60 per shift.

 

[Gooberlx2]

I generally don't as a guest. Unlike a restaurant setting, you don't have control over who might grab the money left on the table when you leave. Another server, another guest who wants to buy another drink, etc... I've sometimes slipped our server a few bucks on the way out if we happen to run into him/her, but I won't go out of my way to hunt our server down when we leave.

For our wedding, gratuity was defined in the quote and invoice. My dad still gave a few bucks to a few servers who went out of their way to accommodate some requests. I'm sure some of the guests tipped their servers too.

 

[crashtestdummy]

Gratuity is often listed in your bill but if it's not, you should give them some money.

 

[Zeze]

bump.