How payment works.
Your money moves when the work does.
The order of payments on a Cordelia wedding, and what has to happen before each one.
The wire transfer.
Today a destination wedding is paid by international transfer. The vendor is good. The venue is right. The contract is signed. And then several thousand dollars move to a foreign account, on a Wednesday, with nothing to point at afterward.
Couples sit on a vendor they like for weeks rather than finish that transfer. Some give up and book a resort. Others send it and spend the next nine months quietly wondering.
No payment is sent before the step it pays for.
With and without.
The same booking, paid two ways.
You pay first. Then you wait.
The deposit reaches the vendor’s account on day one. They have the money. You have a contract in a language you may not read, enforceable in a country you do not live in.
If the work is not delivered, recovering the money costs more than the money. Most of these disputes are never filed at all.
You pay against steps.
Every payment is attached to something that has to happen first. The date confirmed in writing. The design approved by you. The costs documented.
You pay through Cordelia rather than by private transfer to an account you have never seen. No vendor receives your account details.
The final balance clears forty-eight hours after the wedding.
Three parties, one order.
Four moments.
The schedule is set at booking and written into your contract. It varies by wedding. What does not vary is that every payment is attached to something that has to happen first.
The date is held.
The first payment books the date and nothing else. It is sent once the vendor confirms the date in writing. Until that confirmation, nothing moves.
The scope is fixed.
You approve the full design, the line-item budget, and the confirmed roster of sub-vendors, in one sitting. The payment that follows is the one that lets sourcing begin.
Working capital.
Florists buy flowers. Caterers buy ingredients. Rentals are booked. These payments release against documented costs, not against a date on a calendar.
The final balance clears.
If the wedding was delivered and nothing is raised, the balance is released. If you raise something inside those forty-eight hours, the balance stays where it is until the Market Manager has worked through it with both sides.
Cordelia’s commission comes out of the final release, and only on weddings completed without a dispute. Cordelia is paid last.
Who moves, and when.
The Market Manager goes to them, in the city, in person.
If they cannot deliver, Cordelia brings you alternatives from the same market, already verified. Payments that have not been released are not released.
What happens is written down before you sign, not decided afterward.
Payments already made for work already done stay with the vendors who did it. Payments not yet released are not released. Your contract sets out what happens to them, and you read that at booking rather than during a crisis.
Raise it within forty-eight hours and the final balance stays where it is.
The Market Manager was there. Someone who saw it is the one working through it with both sides, which is worth more than a form.
What this is not.
Cordelia is not a financial institution, and does not hold your money on deposit.
Cordelia does not insure your wedding. If you want that, buy wedding insurance, and we will tell you where to look.
Cordelia does not promise to replace lost money out of its own pocket.
What Cordelia does is verify who you are paying, attach every payment to something that has to happen first, and put someone in the city who answers for it.
Paid in order.
Cordelia is hand-picking founding couples for pilot weddings in Tulum, Cabo San Lucas, and San Miguel de Allende.