Wedding ceremony celebrants

Your family minister could marry you or you can find a celebrant throught the 'Australian Federation of Civil Celebrants' site. We are planning on using our friend's celebrant. Plenty of them have already married. Most of our married friends had a church wedding and two had a garden ceremonies. The celebrant that we have contacted said that she'll visit us twice and will work with us to make our vows creative and meaningful but her charges are $625.

My SO did send an email asking her for availability and a price. He mentioned that we got referrals from our friends. The problems with mentioning that we got referrals from our friends could go three ways usually- suppliers are confident that we already like their services so they charge a higher price or they may want additional business via more referrals so give us a better price.  Our friend paid around $550 for the celebrant and her exact same celebrant just quoted us $625. I'm not sure how to negotiate for discount in this situation - should we have replied back with a 'are you able to offer a more competitive price' or 'are you able to give us a discount' or 'your prices are a bit on the high side-I don't think my fiance wants to pay that much?' or 'are you able to offer us a better price?' or 'since we live local to you, are you able to offer us a more competitive pricing?' .... Really, how does one negotiate pricing with a celebrant?

If we hadn't mentioned that we got their names from our friends and instead mentioned that we just randomly pulled their details off the web- would they have given unknown couples a more competitive price? That's the problem with mentioning that you were referred. Sometimes the best strategy is to ask them and not mention the friends, and after they've given a price then to hone in and mention that since you were referred from some friends, can you get a discount? Or even offer the tantalising idea that you can refer more future business to them if they give you a discount today? ... Bargaining is usually something straightforward(you can't express too much enthusiasm at the beginning or it's already a done deal) but when it comes to haggling over wedding prices - it gets a bit tougher simply because it feels tackier?