Pricing is a very personal thing.

Are you tired of going on vendors, websites loving their work but you don’t see your price? Well, let me tell you why no one person, no wedding day. Nothing is the same.

I can speak from my experience as a wedding planner. The services that I offer are not often understood.

Personally speaking, I don’t include pricing on my site and ads because I find couples get lost in the number instead of the relationship that we build and the overall experience of planning that significantly led to a wildly successful wedding day or weekend.

Now, as a planner, I completely understand why some don’t. But frankly, being a bride myself and having to figure out my budget and pay for my wedding on my own, I was extremely frustrated.

There are generally three options for them. One is no pricing at all. Two is a starting point and then three is their full pricing offerings.

the vendors that do not have any pricing on their website. They are wanting to get a lot of inquiries. This may be because they’re a volume wedding vendor. They’re not that exclusive. The wedding venue offers that are putting a starting point for wanting to qualify their leads and they’re wanting to receive less emails.

Let people know that I can’t afford this person, so I’m going to move on. Therefore, this wedding vendor is going to need to spend less time on people who aren’t qualified for them and they’re starting to get maybe in more of the higher tier market.

People to put the full pricing list on their. That wedding vendor will also be able to spend more time on the people who do book. And can get to know those people. They can fully dream up their vision, their idea for that particular vendor’s skill.

Some vendor categories are very cut and dry. Maybe it’s a DJ, you get 4 hours of service, microphone, etc. and this is the price.

But for me as a planner, I know that there’s not a lot of understanding of what we do necessarily or the broad range that we can do. And so if they see a price point, 1000, 10,000, $100,000 and they don’t really know what comes with it, oftentimes it’s an automatic turnoff and that’s an automatic stop. I don’t want to work with them.

But the truth is, when I can have a conversation and explain, this is how it works. This is a services that we offer. It’s a no brainer.

Being a bride, I was extremely frustrated when I would reach out to a vendor just to find out after an hour long conversation that their minimum or their starting price was far beyond my budget and it wasted both of our time to reach out to them.

It is very difficult to give exact prices for things like flowers, photo experiences, catering when there’s so many variables to go into play. But I do strongly believe, and I have a very firm stance on this, it is very beneficial to put a prices starting at or an average spend.

Now as planner we have a starting price for things like our event management because we know that there is a minimum and we will not go below it. However, for a collaboration package or partial planning or a full journey service or full service planning, we will put a starting price and then also say average spend of X, Y, z.Most of our couples fall within this range because we do have an idea of where most people land. Save your time and theirs.

Everyone’s day is different. One bride may have a reception venue, a ceremony venue. It may require a room flip. All those things are elements that require more work, more people, more to do. So yes, we have a base and we have a main structure, but there are other things that need to be added on.

So if you go on my site or any person site and you see one price, you are now calling that person say, Hey, I want that 20 $100 planning package. But then they send you an invoice and it’s like 2700. It will make you feel some type of way. So it’s better to go on the site, not have a price. We talk through it. I explain why certain things are the price and then I send it to you. So that way no expectation is set. It is a real dollar to send because we discussed it.

To each particular couple, while your vendors will likely have set packages for you to review, those packages are built to offer you some customization based on the needs or scope of your event.

Those needs are best discussed during an initial consultation and we cannot recommend this enough. The level of service and planning experience you receive as part of the package price are just as important too.

Are you receiving what you want and more importantly are receiving? What you need are some of the big questions that we really recommend asking as you’re having these conversations with your vendors. I cannot stress enough. Ask the questions. There’s no harm in this. Your vendors are here to guide you and inform you and to explain what you’re getting behind that number.

I’m a big believer that cheaper doesn’t always mean better, though I very much respect that. Budgets have a purpose. Still understand what you may be sacrificing by going with that cheaper option or going with somebody that you’re booking just for the cost and not for the value behind it. Hope this is helpful.