The cost of doing business
I was just reading a wedding planner blog and found this fantastic paragraph that I want to highlight. The reason this caught my eye is:
1 - you can put yourself in the shoes of a wedding planner and see how many "HOURS" are put into the simple, 'day of coordination'
2 - you can see how their fee, worked backwards, pays them almost nothing
3 - you can then see why low fees mean you get low paid vendors, which means... you either get someone without a lot of experience (which is fine if you are aware of that), or someone who isn't really math saavy who may be overcommiting and going to get burned out real fast when they realize they aren't making enough money to survive and be passionate about what they do!
$8-9/hour, depending on where you live, is most likely going to be unskilled labor. Fast food, retail, someone who files papers.
If you want to get someone with tremendous experience at complex events like weddings you are going to have to pay well, with the idea that you are going to get a lot more for your money.
The paragraph is taken from this wedding planning blog.
Charge what you are worth. Take time to figure out how much money you want to make per hour then multiply it times 3. That is a very rough estimate of what your clients need to pay you. You will pay almost 30% for taxes alone plus all your business expenses before you can pay yourself. For example, if you charge $500 for wedding day coordination that includes the final walk-through, rehearsal and 10 hours on the wedding day plus a few meetings with your bride, creating time lines and confirming vendors, you end up with around $25 or so per hour before taxes/expenses. Take your taxes and business expenses from that and you make about $8-$9 hour. AND that does not include paying an assistant. Isn't all your hard work worth more than that? I sure hope so, even as a novice.
1 - you can put yourself in the shoes of a wedding planner and see how many "HOURS" are put into the simple, 'day of coordination'
2 - you can see how their fee, worked backwards, pays them almost nothing
3 - you can then see why low fees mean you get low paid vendors, which means... you either get someone without a lot of experience (which is fine if you are aware of that), or someone who isn't really math saavy who may be overcommiting and going to get burned out real fast when they realize they aren't making enough money to survive and be passionate about what they do!
$8-9/hour, depending on where you live, is most likely going to be unskilled labor. Fast food, retail, someone who files papers.
If you want to get someone with tremendous experience at complex events like weddings you are going to have to pay well, with the idea that you are going to get a lot more for your money.
The paragraph is taken from this wedding planning blog.
Charge what you are worth. Take time to figure out how much money you want to make per hour then multiply it times 3. That is a very rough estimate of what your clients need to pay you. You will pay almost 30% for taxes alone plus all your business expenses before you can pay yourself. For example, if you charge $500 for wedding day coordination that includes the final walk-through, rehearsal and 10 hours on the wedding day plus a few meetings with your bride, creating time lines and confirming vendors, you end up with around $25 or so per hour before taxes/expenses. Take your taxes and business expenses from that and you make about $8-$9 hour. AND that does not include paying an assistant. Isn't all your hard work worth more than that? I sure hope so, even as a novice.
Labels: bridal budget, wedding and money, wedding budget, wedding planning
posted by Elizabeth Doherty Thomas at
3:56 PM
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