First thing on every couples list when considering a wedding planner. How much does a wedding planner cost? Well, the answer is – it depends. Every wedding planner charges differently. But the most important thing is, just like any service – be sure to remember you will get exactly what you pay for. This makes it really difficult to shop around for a wedding planner because it’s almost impossible to compare one price with another as the inclusions are almost always different.
When you are trying to figure out the cost of a wedding planner and you are interviewing, knowing what to ask the wedding planner and what inclusions to look for is the most important thing. But when you don’t know what you don’t know, it’s so hard to know! Here are some thought starters you might like to consider when asking yourself “how much does a wedding planner cost?”.
How much does a wedding planner cost: cheat sheet
- Does your fee include all telephone calls, emails and meetings? How many meetings will we have?
- Do I need to pay additional for any offsite meetings or travel?
- Does this quote include all materials, or do you envisage I will need to pay for any materials that aren’t already included?
- How long have you been in the business for?
- What kind of experience do you have in similar events?
- What kind of services do you do (and what don’t you do?)
- Is this a wedding coordination proposal, or does it include wedding planning in the lead up as well as wedding coordination?
- How long will you attend on the day of the wedding, and how many staff will be assisting?
- Do you handle event styling? Will you help with any little jobs or decor that I want placed out on the day?
- Do you recommend suppliers, can we bring our own or do we need to use yours?
- How many people will be assisting planning our event? What happens if you’re sick?
- Do you help with working out the timeline or runsheet, is that included? Do you communicate this to other vendors?
- What happens in the event of wet weather, if we change location is that included in the fee?
- Do you use any unpaid staff (untrained interns)?
Because no two clients are ever the same, we always custom write a proposal for our full service wedding planning clients. We are guided by what they want and need when looking for a wedding planner, and the questions that we ask our clients during that session mean that there aren’t any out of scope surprises along the way. But hiring good experienced wedding planners and the right person for the job, will always cost you more money than going with the cheapest quote. If you’re thinking about investing in a wedding planner and the price you are quoted seems too good to be true, than just maybe it is.
