SHOULD I BE OFFERING PLANNING PACKAGES?

In the beginning, any wedding that offers experience, is a good wedding. You get to try your hand at new venues, you're able to meet a variety of vendors and ultimately you gain valuable planning experience while avoiding a high amount of risk. As your business grows and the demand for your services increase, you'll start to notice a shift. You’ll realize that you only have so much time. You can't realistically work every single weekend. And you ultimately have to create a sustainable business model.  If you’re on the fence of whether you should continue to offer wedding planning packages, consider the following to determine if it’s time for you to rethink your approach and restructure your offerings:

I. You’re consistently turning away "dream jobs" or large budget events because you've already committed to a "month-of" or "partial planning" package months ago.

II. You’re regularly receiving inquiries from luxury clients who aren’t booking you or you’re only booking the ones who tend to treat you like an assistant or undervalue your expertise overall.

III. You're exhausted, your personal life is suffering or you're thinking about closing your business all together.

If any of the above is happening, the first thing you need to look at is both your pricing model and how you're packaging your services. Maybe it's time to hire someone to handle the smaller events while you focus on the larger projects. Maybe it's time to dive head first into offering full service planning services exclusively. Or, maybe it's time to simply raise your prices allowing you to take on lower quantity but higher quality work. No matter what, packages in your wedding planning business have a shelf life if you're running the business alone. And, even if you're not ready to make an immediate change, creating a strategy around the elimination or restructuring of said packages will become a necessity. 

I delve deeper into this topic in "Pricing for Your Services" where I share the common pricing and service models in our industry including the pros and cons of each.