Free Wedding Planners Pricing Guide!
The number one question I get asked from up and coming wedding planners, is how to price your wedding planning services.
When you begin your event planning career, my recommendation is to start as a Day Of coordinator / Event Producer. This will allow you to learn about building and running event day timelines as well as introduce planning task work and vendor coordination in a low risk environment. It is also easier to attract couples to this service since a lot more couples are looking for a Day Of coordinator. Within my free wedding planners pricing guide, I outline how to charge for your services taking into account hourly wages for you and your employees, planning work required upfront, as well as preliminary package totals you can use for your business.
When pricing your planning services you need to make sure your pricing consists of the following:
Event budget
Length of time given to plan your project
Guest count
Your marketplace
Once you have at least one full season and experience with managing Day Of clients you can start to offer Month Of Coordination. Month Of coordinators know how to plan out project timelines for the last 2-3 months of the planning process. They can coordinate vendor final payments, final planning meetings with vendors, COI's, as well as build an event day timeline and manage any last minute planning dilemma's for their clients. I suggest starting with Day Of coordination so you can learn how long it takes you to complete certain planning tasks, coordinating with vendors, setting up planning meetings, building a timeline, etc. Each wedding planning service builds on the other. Once you can manage your time, understand what your day-to-day looks like, then you can start factoring this into what you charge.
Your hourly rate is going to depend on your experience level as well as the marketplace your business is in. Your packages should also include your hourly rate as well as:
Number of hours you're working on the event day
Number of team members required on the event day
How much planning work and time is required upfront
Event location
After you’ve developed your skills as a Month Of Coordinator, the natural progression in your wedding planning career is to become a Partial Planning Coordinator. A Partial Planning Coordinator manages the relationships between their vendors and clients for a select or limited number of vendors. They limit their time and commitment per client, by limiting the number of vendors they work with. This service also needs to limit the number of pre-planning months and get paid for their time upfront.
If you’re an aspiring wedding planner, or you already own your wedding planning business, you can download my free wedding planner’s pricing guide which outlines my pricing framework in greater detail.