With over 20 years of wedding planning experience, we at Rock Paper Coin know how hard pricing your services can be. Knowing how to charge as a wedding planner to remain competitive and ensure you’re actually making money is a delicate balancing act.

Whether you’re a brand new wedding planner looking for pricing assistance or a seasoned veteran wanting a health check on your invoices, we have the perfect wedding planner pricing template for you to use. This guide gives you pointers on pricing, service tiers, and how you should actually be invoicing for your business. Let’s go!

DON’T MYSTERY SHOP THE COMPETITION

Skip mystery shopping your competitors. Instead of wasting a competitor’s time sending a fake inquiry to get their info, simply ask them out to coffee. Behind every successful business is an owner that is well-connected in their industry. Your connections and networking will provide you with endless referrals, priceless advice, and a strong community - all things you need to be successful. Don’t start off on the wrong foot!

KNOW YOUR LOCAL MARKET

One of the biggest drivers for pricing is your location. Understanding where you are operating your business and rough hourly pricing for wedding planners in your market is important.

As founders of the best wedding planning software on the market, we have some unique industry insights on how much planners charge today, and the data shows location really matters when it comes to pricing.

Here are a few examples of pricing we pulled from our network:

Portland, OR: $85/hour
Los Angeles: $150/hour
North Carolina: $75/hour

Here are examples of how much wedding planners charge according to ZipRecruiter:

Kentucky: $45/hour
New York: $200/hour
Dallas: $36/hour

Remember, these are ranges, not rules. What you ultimately ink into your pricing template will depend on other factors, like experience, monthly business expenses, and what kind of packages you offer.

EXPERIENCED WEDDING PLANNERS CAN UPCHARGE

Now that you have base pricing for your hourly target, it’s important to consider your experience and seniority within the industry.

If you are just starting out, it’s best to fall slightly under the average hourly rate for your first two years. As long as you are still making money, do this to gain as much experience as possible.

For more seasoned planners, going 20-30% above the going market rate is reasonable.

HOW TO CHARGE AS A WEDDING PLANNER:

Before diving into fancy website design and posting on social media, you must understand how you will price your services. From your work above, you should have your hourly rate nailed down; from there, you can get a sense of what your packages should look like.

Pricing your services is a mix of two things baked into one overall amount:

Total hours you will be working
An additional fee to cover the backend of your business

The first part is pretty straightforward — calculate how many hours you typically work for an event and multiply it by your hourly rate.

The second is a little trickier, but we found it easiest to add a percentage to our hours to cover additional expenses. A great starting point for this additional fee is 18%.

This additional fee covers expenses like a day-of assistant, backend business expenses, travel, etc. This fee on top of your hours is really important because without planning for these expenses, you can end up upside down and losing money. Here’s an example:

HOW PLANNERS SHOULD CHARGE FOR FULL-SERVICE PRICING

Pricing gets trickier when it comes to full-service. Some planners charge a flat rate, a percentage, or even a combination of the two.

We are big fans of percentage pricing for full-service services because wedding planners should charge based on the client’s final budget to be compensated fairly.

Let’s say your client hires a band from another state… now your workload has just doubled (think: additional meetings, coordinating travel, accommodations, schedules, etc.). Tying your compensation to the overall budget instead of a flat rate ensures your workload is compensated correctly.

THE BEST WAY WEDDING PLANNERS SHOULD INVOICE

Your pricing template can help you plan for how much you should charge, but it doesn’t help you get paid.

Ensuring you are profitable at the end of a package is extremely important, and one of the biggest drivers in making this possible is making sure you are collecting funds and managing invoices efficiently.

Accepting online payments is one of the best decisions you can make. Today’s couples are Millennials and Gen Z, so catering to their digital demands by offering online payments will ensure you are paid fast and taken seriously as a modern-day business.

When to invoice is an important way to manage your company’s cash flow. If you are planning weddings during a more seasonal time, like the summer months, consider breaking up your invoice into three (or more) installments.

The first payment is the most important. The retainer should be noted as non-refundable and be 50% of your package price. The remaining installments can be in any denomination that works best for your business or clients. However, it’s important to receive all payments due four weeks before the event date.

By sending your invoices electronically, you can build out one invoice when booking for all future installments. You can set due dates, and your digital invoice will send out all the reminders for you. Gone are the days of tracking future payments — let the software does this for you!

Here’s a sample invoice using Rock Paper Coin — using our online invoicing system is easy and simple.

Nailing down your pricing is incredibly important. But even more important is making sure you are getting paid on time, and that’s done by accepting online payments. Make your pricing work for you, and don’t feel pressured to discount or lower your prices — know your worth and be confident.