Hey ya’ll!  I just wanted to give you a head’s up on a great new site for wedding planners.  Planner’s Lounge was initiated by my sweet friend, Debbie Orwat in Colorado as a site to help wedding planners share and receive information, chat and get inspired.  It’s a great looking site and I found myself last night reading through every single post!

Debbie is an amazing lady – not only does she own and operate a very successful planning business in Colorado – Save the Date Events, she also is the owner of the Colorado StudioWed.  There is much to be learned from her experience, so you will definitely want to sign up for the email newsletters from the Planner’s Lounge and follow on Facebook and Twitter too!

Congratulations, Debbie on a great site launch and thank you for giving back to the wedding industry!

Ok, this will be a touchy subject, I know.  I’ll go ahead and provide a disclaimer in advance – I’m climbing on my soapbox for the duration of this post.

This morning, I posted a comment on a fellow wedding planner/friend’s facebook page in which I thanked and concurred with her opinion that wedding planners should not offer discounted services on Black Friday/Cyber Monday.  Linnyette Richardson Hall is someone that I respect and admire in the industry and many of you know and follow her as well.  If you are not following her, then you need to be – and if you ever get a chance to hear her speak at a conference, don’t pass it up!  Here is a link to her facebook page, with the status update and comments from others.  Her point was that these discounts are intended for merchandise, not services, and I agree.  I also feel the need to elaborate, so read on, please.

While I have noticed lots of discounted services over the last several days, the most extreme discounted example I noticed was for 40% off month of wedding coordination services, making this particular person’s discounted month of coordination price $600.  I will not single this person out, so don’t even ask me who it is, please.  I am not writing this post to belittle her, because guess what?  When I first started, I did a couple of 3 – 6 month partial planning jobs for $300 each.  Yes, it’s true – and that pause you may have just noticed was me taking a moment to hang my head in shame.  Most of the lessons I have learned about pricing my services have been learned the hard way…I’ll share with you two specific stories.  I think they will drive home the message I want to convey.  

Story #1:   I was really eager to get in good with one of the top catering companies here in Atlanta, so when the sales consultant asked me for a “favor” for his client, I caved.  The lesson came into play when the sales consultant wanted me to match the ridiculously low price for several more clients, and dropped me like a bad habit when I conservatively increased my prices 6 months later. 

Story #2:  A bride and groom gave me a sob story about the planner they had hired being non-responsive, but they couldn’t pay more than $300 to hire a new planner.  I wanted to help them, so I gave in.  The lesson from this one came on the night prior to the wedding when I was taking an inventory of the couple’s wedding items they had just passed off to me at the rehearsal.  I opened an unlabeled box to see what was inside, only to find the cake topper in all of its Swarovski Crystal glory, and a price tag still attached that was $150 more than the fee I had charged them.  That one hurt people, it still does.

Time tracking has been the best thing I have ever done for my business.  I track every moment within reason that I spend on a client.  At the end of each year, I average the amount of time I have spent on each client for each type of service that I offer and use this information to adjust pricing for the upcoming year.  I will admit that my pricing does increase each year, but I’ve noticed that so do the services that I have included over the past year, as well as the amount of hours that I have spent on each client.  I would add that most of the additions were via client request, not at my own suggestion.  It’s a battle we fight every day, clients want more service for less money, and in my experience, that does not apply only to “budget” brides.

Using the example of the $600 discounted month of coordination service pricing mentioned above, please consider the following:

Hypothetical number of hours spent working with a month of coordination client – 41 hours spent as shown:

• Average of 10 hours on the wedding day
• Average of 2 hours spent on the rehearsal day
• Average of 2 hours spent on initial consultation meeting
• Average of 4 hours spent on final details meeting/walk-through/tasting, etc.
• Average of 3 hours spent on any final vendor meetings
• Average of 5 hours per week X 4 weeks spent on administrative/in-office work

41 hours of work divided by $600 = $14.63 per hour.  I made $15 an hour as a typist with no college degree in 1991.  I do not wish to make less today than I did 20 years ago.  How about you?

If you think you are spending less than 40 hours on each month of coordination client, I challenge you to track your time and take a closer look.  41 total hours is actually pretty conservative, in my opinion.  Simply add an assistant planner to the equation for the wedding day at the 10 hours shown and you’re up to 51 hours, with no additional tasks or in office hours applied.  We all know that there is some problematic issue that comes up at the last minute, or an unforeseen task that requires our attention and adds to the total number of hours we spend.  I have chose to price my services in a range that allows me to take on some of these tasks without telling the client, “I’m sorry, that is not included in our agreement.”  Larger tasks that come up unexpectedly are quoted in a separate invoice on a case by case basis.  We should carefully consider each client and offer custom or semi-custom pricing even with month of coordination services.  Every wedding is unique and requires different services.  I have a chart that I refer to with factors that affect pricing such as number of guests, number of wedding party members, ceremony & reception venue locations, etc.  While each type of service starts with a base price, certain factors contribute to an increase in the pricing.  Maybe I will write in detail about this in a future post if enough of you express an interest.

Your pricing is your business, but I hope you will consider this post when you begin planning your 2012 pricing.  Please don’t take offense to my comments and suggestions – I really only mean to help other planners.   There simply was no forum like this when I first started as a planner.  Hey, I do have an unpublished, unspoken deeply discounted price that I offer to certain clients.  I call it the “friends & family rate” and some of my own rules surrounding this pricing is that I need to have known either the bride, groom, or their parents for at least 10 years to offer this pricing to them.  Also, I only offer a couple of these rates each year – preferably in the slow season.  My discounted service is a gift to them and I am very clear that the pricing is to remain confidential.  I also let them know what the pricing would be without the discount.  Tacky?  Maybe, but I need them to value me and I find that when I discount deeply, sometimes my services are perceived as less of a value.

Do visualize something with me, though regarding your own pricing – ok?  Come on- just humor me!

Again, using the example I mentioned above (40% discount on month of coordination = $600 final coordination price after discount), imagine you are sitting face to face with a potential client right now.  Seriously, close your eyes and picture this.  Would you be willing to take $240 cash from your own wallet and hand it across the table to them in order for them to enter a contract with you for $600?  Essentially, that is what you are doing when you discount.

My guess is that if you are working as a wedding planner, it is because you love the work.  If you truly love the work, then I will assume that you are good at what you do.  If you are really good at the service you provide, you do not need to discount your services EVER.  If you are in the midst of negotiating, I think it is much more effective to offer an extra service, such as rsvp tracking, extra vendor referrals, budget/final payment assistance, etc.

This post could easily turn into a dozen more.  If you have specific questions about pricing, I would be happy to correspond with you via email – just message me at info@thestylishplanner.com.  Comments are also welcome below, but please note that I do moderate comments.

Special thanks to Linnyette for a sharing her opinion so openly on a timely and thought provoking topic.