Wedding and event planner pricing calculators
Planning is sold as a package and delivered as a year of hours. Full planning can run from first enquiry to the final invoice over eighteen months, with supplier calls, site visits and timelines spread thinly across the whole period.
These calculators help you convert a planning package into an hours budget, so you can see whether a fixed fee or a percentage of spend actually pays.
Calculators for wedding and event planners
Costs that belong in every booking
- Planning hours by phase
Discovery, supplier sourcing, design, logistics, rehearsal and event day.
- Site visits
Travel, time on site and any accommodation, often repeated several times per wedding.
- On-the-day team
Assistants and coordinators, paid from arrival to breakdown.
- Software and tools
Planning platforms, proposal software and file storage.
- Insurance
Professional indemnity and public liability appropriate to coordination work.
- Marketing and fayres
Stand costs, styled shoots and advertising allocated across bookings.
- Sample and mock-up costs
Tastings, styling mock-ups and materials that are rarely recharged.
- Payment fees
Card and platform percentages on staged payments across a long booking cycle.
Common pricing mistakes
- Charging a percentage without an hours floor
A percentage of a small budget can still carry full-planning workload; set a minimum fee.
- Unlimited supplier meetings
Meetings are the easiest hours to give away and the hardest to recover.
- Pricing on-the-day coordination as one day
It typically includes weeks of handover, timeline building and supplier confirmation.
- Not costing the assistant team
Event-day staffing is a variable cost of that wedding and should scale the price.
Worked example
Illustrative example — a £3,500 full planning package. These figures are an illustrative walk-through of the formulas below — they are not survey data, benchmarks or a real customer result.
| Package fee | £3,500 |
|---|---|
| Planning hours across 14 months | 85 hrs |
| Site visits (4 × 4 hrs incl. travel)Total: 101 hrs | 16 hrs |
| Travel costs | £160 |
| Event-day assistant (12 hrs @ £15) | £180 |
| Software, insurance, marketing allocated | £220 |
| Payment fees (1.5%) | £52.50 |
| True cost excluding owner time | £612.50 |
| Contribution before owner pay | £2,887.50 |
| Effective hourly rate£2,887.50 ÷ 101 hrs | £28.59 |
Full planning fees look substantial in isolation. Spread across a hundred hours, the hourly return is often lower than on-the-day coordination — which is worth knowing before you discount.
How the figures are calculated
- Hours budget = planning hours by phase + site visits + event day + handover.
- Contribution = fee − travel − event-day staffing − allocated overheads − payment fees.
- Effective hourly rate = contribution ÷ hours budget.
Frequently asked questions
- Should I charge a fixed fee or a percentage of the wedding budget?
- Both can work, but a percentage needs a minimum fee underneath it. Model the hours the service will take and check that the percentage clears your target hourly rate at the lower end of your client budgets.
- How do I price on-the-day coordination fairly?
- Count the handover weeks, not just the day. Timeline building, supplier confirmations and rehearsal attendance usually add fifteen to twenty-five hours before the event itself.
- Can I save different packages and compare them?
- Package comparison with saved scenarios is free with an account. The public calculators are free too and require no account.
Related guides and tools
Results are planning estimates based on the figures you enter. They are not financial, accounting or tax advice.