Pricing, I bet you're probably pretty excited for this lesson, you're probably wondering how much you should be charging so I feel weird telling people how much I think they should charge for their services. I'm like Who am I to be telling you how much to charge and everyone is a little bit different. But so before we move forward with pricing yourself to hear some food for thought, your value and worth are only what you can convince your potential client. So that being said, Now that I have been doing this for over 10 years, I can certainly charge more because I can convey a lot of value and worth based on my previous experience and competence and reviews and all that kind of stuff. So but I know you just want me to tell you so here Here are some estimates. So one is research what others in your area are charging Obviously, throughout the country is going to vary slightly, you know, Orange County or LA or you know, New York is going to be a lot different than maybe a small town in Ohio.

So I'm based in Southern California in Orange County, and wedding management ranges, anywhere from about 1500 to $3,000. Newer planners will probably start around, you know, the 12 to 1500 dollar range, maybe even as low as $1,000. I did a ton of day of coordination weddings for $1,000, and then quickly bumped myself up to 12 to 1500. And then these days were more in the two to $3,000 range depending on what the client is looking for. So just one thing is do not offer your services, please, please, please for three to $400 don't do that. I know that starting out, you're like I just want to book this client.

I'll do it for $300 Please just somebody booked me. But I'm going to give you three reasons why you should hold out and stick to your prices. So one, you will get bad clients that are going to be way more high maintenance and demanding. Trust me, if they've only valued you at $300 of worth, you're going to treat you like you were only worth $300 I've, I've done this have, you know, and undercharged myself to both clients and it happens consistently. So I stopped doing that. And number two, it's, it's actually doing a disservice to the industry as a whole.

So when people think that they can book a day of planet for $400, it's discounting the concept of a wedding planner, and leading people to believe that planners charging 1800 dollars are overcharging, which as you'll see in the next slide, we're not overcharging in this $2,000 range. So it's like I said, kind of undervaluing wedding planners as a whole. And then lastly, I mean, this is not really a reason. But I know it's tempting to discount the services heavily to get that first client. Like I said, trust me I've been where you have been or where you are. And just please be patient and trust that you will get the right clients and inquiries in your inbox.

Just trust, trust trust. So moving on, off my soapbox. Now, another way to determine your pricing is determining what you want your hourly rate to be, and then kind of backing it up from there. So let's go through this example. If you follow this course and implement all of these tips and strategies to really make this process as efficient as possible, the average day of coordination package will take you about 20 hours. I previously was spending Do about 30 hours.

And now I know it takes me about 20 hours to fulfill this entire service of the timeline, updating the timeline confirming the vendors rehearsal and wedding day. So let's say you were charging $2,000 for your package for the day of coordination. And I'm going to just estimate about $250. And staff that would be two assistants at eight hours for at $15 an hour each. So that brings us to 1750 divided by 20 hours equals in $87 and 5050 cent hourly rate. So these are that is an hourly rate for just those 20 hours you're working, they don't all of a sudden multiply that by 40 hours a week and think that's your salary.

It's obviously the working hours. So that's a good way to kind of like back yourself out and see where You're at, you don't want to end up with yourself you know being in that like, you know minimum wage life. So these are just two ways to determine your pricing. Like I said, kind of get it start with where the averages in your area based on your level of experience and then you can also use this hourly rate calculation. And then you'll really start the more clients you start to service you'll start to get to know you know, where you want to adjust your pricing for different weddings like we went over in the last section of the packages from that, you know, small 50 person hotel wedding to the 300 person wedding at the private estate. So these are two examples.

I hope they help and then we will move on to talk about contracts.