Vendor research and shortlists

Research is where Claude saves you the most hours, and where it can lead you furthest astray if you take its word for things. The job is a shortlist of three to five per category, each with a reason, a source and a list of questions. Booking is a later step.

What order to book in

The vendors that book up first are the ones to research first. Zola's guide puts venues at about a year out, photographers and videographers at 10 to 12 months, florists at 9 to 10, music at 8 to 9, caterers around 8, and hair and makeup around 5 to 6. Your region and season will move those around. A popular month in a popular place books earlier. Treat them as an order, not a deadline.

Most couples start with the venue, because its date, capacity and rules shape everything else: who can cater, what time music has to stop, whether you need to rent tables.

Tools for the job

• Web search lets Claude look things up and cite what it found. It's available on Free. On Team and Enterprise, an owner has to turn it on. If you have the newer Claude experience, don't go looking for a web search toggle. Anthropic's help page says there isn't one.
• Research is a longer, deeper search that works through many sources and writes a report with citations. It's on paid plans (Pro, Max, Team and Enterprise). One catch: started from the phone app, Research searches only the web and doesn't use your connectors.

For a first sweep of venues, Research is worth it if you have it. For "find me three photographers near the venue who do candid work", web search is enough.

The research prompt

Give Claude the brief, the category, and exactly what you want back. Ask for sources on every line, and tell it what to do when it doesn't know.

Find wedding venues that fit our brief (in project knowledge). Must-haves: within 90 minutes' drive of [town], 90 to 110 guests, a step-free route to the ceremony space and restrooms, open on Fridays or Saturdays in late September or early October.

For each venue, give me: name, website, town, why it fits, anything that might rule it out, and what we'd still need to ask. Link the page you got each fact from. Don't state prices, capacities or availability unless the venue's own site says so, and if it does, say which page.

Give me up to eight, then tell me which three you'd contact first and why.

Then turn the answer into rows:

Turn your top five into rows for the Vendors tab: Vendor ID (carry on from V004), Category, Vendor, Website, Found via, Why it fits, Concerns, Stage "Shortlisted", Owner "Partner A", Next action, Next action due (this Friday). Give them as a table I can paste.

Check what it found

Claude makes mistakes, and search results go stale. Anthropic's help page says not to rely on Claude as a single source of truth and to check the sources it cites. Before a vendor goes in the sheet as "Shortlisted":

• Open the vendor's own site. Is the business real, still trading, and in the place Claude said? Is the capacity what Claude says it is?
• Read reviews yourself, on more than one site. Ask Claude to summarise them if you like, but read a few of the bad ones in full.
• Treat prices as unknown until the vendor quotes you. Published prices are often old or "from" prices. Claude shouldn't be quoting numbers from memory, and the project instructions in chapter 2 tell it not to.
• Availability only comes from the vendor. Nothing online tells you a date is free.

Red flags

The Better Business Bureau's advice on wedding photographer scams applies to most vendors:

• A vendor who only works and talks through social media.
• A vendor who takes payment only through peer-to-peer payment apps.
• A vendor who won't do a phone call or meeting.

The BBB also says not to pay the whole fee up front. Ask Claude to check each shortlisted vendor against these, and to tell you what it couldn't check:

For each vendor on our Shortlisted list, check what you can find for these warning signs: no website or business listing outside social media, payment only by peer-to-peer apps, no phone number or address, very new with no reviews, or a name that doesn't match the business registration. Tell me what you found, with links, and what you couldn't check.

Ask the same questions of everyone

You can't compare answers to different questions. Before you contact anyone, have Claude write one question list per category, based on your brief. For a venue, Sam and Riley's (made up) included the rain plan, the step-free route, the latest finish time, whether outside caterers are allowed, what the price includes, and the date-change policy. That list becomes the inquiry email in the next chapter, and the column headings in the Quotes tab.