Guides
Wedding planning services packages: how to define scope
A protocol for wedding planning services packages: set responsibility dates, define scope, price change orders by hours, and test promises against venue rules.
What to take away
- When defining wedding planning services packages, treat each package as a boundary, written so a couple can see it before they need it. The boundary has three parts: the date you take over, the decisions you own, and the way anything outside those two gets added.
- Write every package as inclusions and exclusions side by side. A couple reads the exclusions column more carefully than the inclusions, and that is exactly what you want.
- Put the upgrade trigger in the document. "If you would like us to source vendors before that date, that is partial planning, and here is what it adds" turns scope creep into a sale.
- Test each package against the worst venue contract in your market, not the best one. If the package cannot be delivered inside a four-hour load-in and a 10pm curfew, rewrite it.
The protocol, in order
- Fix the responsibility date for each package and write it as a calendar rule, not a feeling. "Six weeks before the wedding date" is a rule; "the final stretch" is not.
- List the decisions you own from that date, by categorytimeline, vendor confirmations, rehearsal, day-of direction, close-out. Then list the decisions that remain the couple's, by name, because a couple who is told "the guest list is yours" does not email you about seating.
- Write the exclusions column before the inclusions column. It is harder and more useful.
- Define the add-on pathwhat a change order looks like, how it is priced (hours), and that it is agreed in writing before work starts.
- Read the package against the most restrictive venue contract you work with. Load-in window, curfew, closed vendor list, in-house coordinator. Anything the package promises that the venue would prevent gets a qualifier.
- Read it against the advertising standard, because the public package page is an advertisement.
- Have one past client read it and tell you what they think they would get. Where their answer differs from yours, the document is wrong, not the client.
How to use a two-column format
Use the two columns for coordination, partial planning and full planning; move the responsibility date and decision list to match each package.
Coordination package: in and out
We do, from six weeks out
- Timeline
- Build from vendor contracts
- Vendors
- Confirm arrival, setup, contact
- Rehearsal
- Run the rehearsal
- Wedding day
- Direct first arrival to last departure
- Problems
- Hold emergency kit, solve day-of
- Money
- Distribute prepared payments
We do not, and who does
- Timeline
- Choose or book vendors
- Vendors
- Negotiate pricing or review terms
- Rehearsal
- Plan rehearsal dinner (add-on)
- Wedding day
- Design, florals, personal styling
- Problems
- Manage guest list, RSVPs, seating
- Money
- Carry cash or pay from own funds
The right-hand column does the selling. A couple who reads "choose or book any vendor" in the exclusions learns, unprompted, that partial planning exists and what it does.
That upgrade trigger works on the page, not in an awkward March conversation. Package economics are covered in which services carry the best margin; the packaging protocol only has to make the choice visible.
Where the venue contract rewrites the package
Pull out the contract for the venue with the tightest rules in your market and read your package against it.
Does the venue contract rewrite it?
Short load-in window?
add second assistant or qualifier
keep setup promise as written
If the venue's load-in is short, "we set up your personal items" may not be deliverable by one coordinator and one assistant. The package either gains a second assistant above a stated guest count, or the setup promise gains a qualifier.
If the venue has a closed vendor list, a partial planning package that promises to "source your caterer" is promising something the venue forbids. Write "source vendors in categories the venue allows" and say so at the consultation.
If the venue has an in-house coordinator, your package needs a sentence that says where their job ends and yours begins, in the venue's own terms. The couple should never discover on the day that two people think they are in charge of the same cue.
The full reasoning about how the venue contract shapes every package, including the difference between a music-off curfew and a vendors-out curfew, sits in the services and packages overview. For the packaging protocol, the test is simply: can this be delivered at that venue on a wet Saturday?
Testing the package against the day
A package is a promise about a Saturday, so the last check is physical. Take the inclusions column and walk it against the day-of kit and the day-of team. "We hold the emergency kit" means the kit exists and has been used; the inventory in the equipment and setup overview is what that sentence is promising.
Walk the inclusions against the day
- Emergency kit exists and has been used
- Coordinator on site at load-in time
- Radios packed before departure
- Second assistant trigger stated in package
- Assistant fee included or billed separately
"We direct the day from first arrival" means a coordinator is on site at the load-in time, which for some venues is before dawn. The pre-wedding sequence in the equipment checklist for new owners is how you make sure that coordinator is not you, alone, having forgotten the radios.
Where the promise depends on a second assistant, the package has to say when one is added and that it is included in the fee or billed separately. How those assistants are found and kept is a separate question, treated in how to find reliable day-of staff; the package only needs to be honest about whether they exist.
The public page is an advertisement
The package page on your website is where the advertising standard applies. Federal Trade Commission: Advertising FAQs: A Guide for Small Business requires truthful, supported claims and endorsements that reflect real experience.
Keeping the package page legal
- Responsibility date appears on the page
- No 'we handle everything' on coordination pages
- Testimonial is from a buyer of that package
- Use verbsscope, solicit, inspect, coordinate, monitor
- Cut 'curate' and 'transform'
Three habits keep a package page inside that: the responsibility date appears on the page, not only in the contract. "We handle everything" appears on no page describing coordination, and the testimonial under the package is from a couple who bought that package.
The federal occupational description at U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics: Meeting, Convention, and Event Planners is worth reading next to your inclusions column. Its verbs, scoping, soliciting bids, inspecting, coordinating, monitoring, are the verbs a package should use. Where your page uses "curate" or "transform," a couple learns nothing about what will happen on the day.
Keeping the record
The signed package, every change order, and the timeline as finally delivered are the record of what was sold and what was done. Keep them together, per wedding, for as long as your accountant and lawyer advise.
Federal guidance on business records, Internal Revenue Service: What kind of records should I keep?, gives the tax reason. The operational reason: when a couple says "we thought that was included," the two-column document answers.
Common questions
How many packages should be on the page?
Three, because couples can hold three in their heads, and the middle one is where most of them land. Add-ons live below the three as a list, priced as hours.
Should the packages show prices?
Show the price if your market's couples expect it and your fees are stable across venues; show "from" pricing if the venue's contract changes the work materially; show no price and explain why if every wedding is quoted individually. Any of the three is honest if the page says which it is doing.
What if a couple asks for a custom package?
Build it from the same two columns. A custom package is a responsibility date and a decisions list like any other; the only thing custom about it is the combination.
