How to Price Your Wedding Planning Services Without Racing to the Bottom

Let me guess. You looked at what the other planners in your area charge, found the middle, knocked a bit off because you're "still new", and called it your price. Then you booked a few weddings, worked every weekend, and realised you were earning less per hour than the bar staff.

You're not alone. Pricing is the single most common thing that comes up in my coaching calls, and it's almost never because the planner is bad at planning. It's because nobody ever showed them how to build a price from the ground up. So let's do that.

Why copying competitors' prices keeps you broke

When you price by looking sideways, you inherit everyone else's mistakes. You have no idea whether the planner down the road is profitable, subsidised by a partner's income, or quietly burning out. Her price tells you what she charges, not what the work costs.

Racing to the bottom also attracts exactly the couples who will shop you on price again later. They'll ask for a discount, then for "just one more" meeting, then for you to sort out the shuttle bus at 11pm. Low prices don't just pay less. They change the kind of client who says yes.

The fix is to stop starting with the market and start with your own numbers.

Step one: know what a wedding actually costs you

Before you can charge properly you need to know two things: how many hours a wedding takes you, and what your business costs to run each year.

Count the real hours

Track one full wedding from enquiry to final thank-you email. Include the consultation, proposal writing, supplier calls, site visits, run sheet drafts, the rehearsal, the day itself (setup to pack-down), and the admin afterwards. Most planners I work with guess somewhere around half of the true figure. The hours you don't count are the hours you give away.

Add up your overheads

Software, insurance, phone, website, accounting, education, travel, your emergency kit, marketing, and the tax you'll owe. Divide the year's total by the number of weddings you can realistically deliver. That's the overhead every wedding has to carry before you've paid yourself a cent.

Decide what you need to earn

Pick a salary you'd be happy to accept if someone else employed you to do this job. Then add a profit margin on top, because a business that only pays wages isn't a business, it's a job with extra risk.

Step two: build your price floor

Here's the simple framework I teach:

1. Your salary target divided by the number of weddings per year.
2. Plus overheads per wedding.
3. Plus profit, somewhere between 15 and 30 percent depending on your growth plans.
4. Equals your floor: the lowest price at which a full-service wedding makes sense.

Your floor isn't your price. It's the line you never go below. If your floor is higher than what the market is currently paying you, that's not a reason to drop your floor. It's information. It tells you that you either need to change who you're selling to, change what you're selling, or change how you're selling it.

Your price floor is not a number you negotiate. It's the number that tells you whether you have a business at all.

Step three: package for value, not for hours

Couples don't buy hours. They buy the feeling of not having to worry. So once you know your floor, stop presenting your work as a timesheet.

A structure that works well for most planners:

• Full planning: your signature service, priced well above the floor, for couples who want you from the start.
• Partial planning: for couples who've booked the big pieces and need you to bring it home.
• Wedding day management: a tightly scoped service with a clear start date, a set number of meetings and a fixed day-of team.

Each package should have a clear scope: number of meetings, supplier recommendations included, hours on the day, how many team members attend. Scope is what protects your margin. Without it, every package quietly turns into full planning at a partial price.

If you're building packages for the first time, the pricing and sales chapters in The Wedding Business & Marketing Handbook walk through it with worksheets, and The Wedding Planner's Handbook covers scoping each service properly.

Step four: say the price like you mean it

I've watched planners with excellent prices lose bookings because of how they delivered them. A wobbly voice, an apology, an instant "but I can be flexible" before the couple has even reacted. Couples read that as uncertainty, and uncertainty is the opposite of what they're paying a planner for.

Some practical habits:

• Show your investment after you've talked about outcomes, not before.
• State the figure once, clearly, then stop talking.
• Offer choice between your packages, not a discount on one.
• If a couple can't afford full planning, move them to a smaller scope. Don't shrink your price on the same scope.

When I grew my planning business to a team of 18 planners, the thing that made our pricing hold was consistency. Every planner presented the same packages, the same way, with the same confidence. Couples trust a business that knows its own value.

Step five: review every season

Prices aren't a tattoo. Review them at least once a year, and every time one of these happens:

• You're booked out more than a season ahead.
• Your costs have gone up (they have).
• You've added a skill, a team member or a service that makes the experience better.
• You notice you're dreading certain weddings because they don't pay enough for the effort.

Raise prices for new enquiries first and honour what existing couples have signed. That keeps trust intact while your business catches up with your worth. Once your pricing is sorted, the next leak to plug is usually conversion, which I unpack in what a wedding business coach actually does.

If you'd like someone to go through your numbers with you, line by line, that's exactly the kind of work I do in 1:1 coaching over Zoom. We look at your real hours, your real costs and the clients you actually want, then build prices you can say out loud without flinching.

Enquire about pricing coaching

FAQs

How much should a wedding planner charge?

There's no single right number, because it depends on your hours, overheads, location and the clients you serve. Work out your price floor first (salary target plus overheads plus profit, per wedding), then build packages above it. Never price below your floor just to match a competitor.

Should wedding planners charge a percentage of the wedding budget?

Some do, but a percentage ties your income to the couple's spending rather than the work involved. A small, complicated wedding can take as many hours as a large one. Fixed packages with clear scope are easier to sell and protect your margin better.

How do I stop couples asking for discounts?

Present packages with defined scope and offer a smaller package instead of a cheaper version of the same one. When the discount question comes up, the answer becomes "here's what fits that budget", not "let me see what I can do".

How often should I raise my wedding planning prices?

Review prices at least annually, and sooner if you're booking well ahead, your costs have risen or you've added real value. Apply new pricing to new enquiries and honour existing contracts.