How to compare wedding planning services by contribution per Saturday

What to take away

The variable that matters is the Saturday

Every service either uses a Saturday or it does not. A business with one lead planner has a fixed number of sellable Saturdays each season.

So 'which service is most profitable' becomes two questions: which service earns most per Saturday it uses, and what can I sell on the other days. Any analysis that ignores this, including ranking services by fee, points to the wrong package.

For a service that consumes a Saturday, define:

Contribution per Saturday, K, is F minus C_a minus T minus r multiplied by (H_w + H_s). Rank services by K, not by F. How r is set, and what your own time is really worth, is a pricing question; this page only needs the ratio.

Working through the three packages

Coordination. F is smallest. H_w is short and predictable, because the couple has done the sourcing and you are confirming, building the timeline and running a rehearsal. H_s is the same as for any other package. K is often better than planners expect, because the fee is nearly all margin once the day is staffed.

Partial planning. F is larger. H_w grows with every vendor category you source, and each category is three or four proposals, a comparison, a couple's decision and a contract review. K depends almost entirely on how many categories you agreed to source and how decisive the couple is.

Full planning. F is largest. H_w is the great unknown, because a year-long engagement includes every email, every change of mind and every family conversation. K can be the best on the list or the worst, and the difference is whether the contract caps meetings and response times or leaves them open.

The most profitable package is the one whose hours you can predict. A large fee attached to unbounded hours is a risk, not a margin.

The scope discipline that bounds those hours is described in the services and packages overview, and it is not optional if full planning is to stay profitable.

Services that consume no Saturday

Now the second half of the question. Once the season's Saturdays are sold, contribution can only grow from services delivered on other days. For these, K is simply F minus T minus r multiplied by hours, and there is no ceiling but your calendar.

The occupational profile at U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics: Meeting, Convention, and Event Planners describes work that is mostly sourcing, inspecting and coordinating. All five services above are slices of that work sold on their own, which is why they need no new skill.

What the arithmetic says about the vendor bench

Every sourcing-heavy service depends on having trusted vendors to call. A planner sourcing catering for the first time spends many more hours than one who knows three caterers and their availability. The bench built during a coordination-only first season is what makes partial and full planning profitable in year two, because it drives H_w down.

How that bench is recruited and kept is covered in the hiring and training overview, which treats vendors as a team you did not hire but are accountable for.

Two cautions

First, K is computed from real hours, so keep them. A simple log of hours per engagement, by phase, is the single most valuable record the business keeps.

Federal guidance on records, Internal Revenue Service: What kind of records should I keep?, covers supporting income and expenses. Apply the same discipline to hours to make this page usable.

Second, once you know your most profitable service, you will be tempted to promote it on your website and oversell it. The advertising standard at Federal Trade Commission: Advertising FAQs: A Guide for Small Business applies to package pages: claims must be truthful and supported.

"Our most popular package" is a claim about your bookings and should match them.

Common questions

Is design profitable?

For a planner who is also a designer, design hours are weekday hours. For everyone else, design is a subcontracted service, and the fee is largely passed through. The Saturday coordination burden goes up, so run the K calculation before adding it.

The equipment side of design, the inventory and setup crew, is covered in the equipment and setup overview.

Should I drop coordination once I can sell full planning?

Not until the arithmetic says so. Coordination has the most predictable K, feeds the vendor bench, and keeps you on the venues' referral lists. Many established planners keep it precisely because it is the service venues send.

Where does growth come from once the Saturdays are sold?

Weekday services first, then a second lead planner, which is a different business decision. The sequence is set out in the expansion and market overview, and the start of it, deciding whether the business is ready at all, is the subject of how to get the business started.