Pricing your fee: percentage, flat, hourly

Ontario planners charge 10–20% of budget, flat packages, or hourly for consulting. Each model changes the client’s incentives and yours. Choose deliberately.

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Pricing your fee: percentage, flat, hourly.

Ontario planners charge 10 to 20 percent of budget, flat packages, or hourly for consulting.

Each model changes the client's incentives and yours.

Three ways to charge.

Pricing a day-of package.

Count the hours honestly: a one-hour handover meeting, four hours building the run of show and confirming vendors, a rehearsal or site visit, twelve hours on the day, two hours of wrap-up.

Twenty hours at 90 dollars is 1,800 dollars; add insurance and travel and you are at 2,000, dollars which is the market.

Pricing full planning.

Full planning for a 150-guest wedding is commonly 120 to 200 hours over a year.

At 75 dollars an hour that is 9,000 to 15,000, dollars which is why percentage fees of 12 to 15 percent on a 70,000 dollars wedding land in the same place.

What the fee has to cover.

Your hourly rate is not your wage.

It has to carry everything the business costs before you are paid.

Defining the package in writing.

A flat fee only works if the scope is written down.

For each package, list what is included (number of meetings, number of vendor categories managed, hours on the day, number of planner staff on the day), what is excluded (HST, permits, travel outside a radius, additional events such as a rehearsal dinner or a mehndi night), and how extras are billed (an hourly rate or a fixed add-on).

That is the lesson. The worksheet and the quiz are just below this video.

What you will be able to do

• Compare three fee models
• Price a day-of package and a full-planning package
• Explain your fee in one sentence

Three ways to charge

Pricing a day-of package

Count the hours honestly: a one-hour handover meeting, four hours building the run of show and confirming vendors, a rehearsal or site visit, twelve hours on the day, two hours of wrap-up. Twenty hours at $90 is $1,800; add insurance and travel and you are at $2,000, which is the market. Pricing below $1,200 means you are paying to work.

Pricing full planning

Full planning for a 150-guest wedding is commonly 120–200 hours over a year. At $75 an hour that is $9,000–$15,000, which is why percentage fees of 12–15 percent on a $70,000 wedding land in the same place.

What the fee has to cover

Your hourly rate is not your wage. It has to carry everything the business costs before you are paid. Work through the list once a year and your rate will stop being a guess.

• Business liability insurance, which most venues require you to hold before you can work in them.
• Software, templates, a phone plan, a laptop that is replaced every few years.
• Travel across the GTA; a site visit in Oakville and a tasting in Markham in the same week is a tank of fuel and four hours.
• Unbilled time: proposals that do not win, discovery meetings for clients who choose someone else, the admin of invoicing.
• HST, once you pass $30,000 in revenue over four consecutive calendar quarters: you must register, charge it on your fee and remit it. Input tax credits let you recover HST on business purchases.
• Income tax and CPP contributions, which no employer is paying for you.
• Days you cannot work and are not paid.

In our experience a planner who wants to take home the equivalent of a modest salary needs to bill at two to three times the hourly figure they first think of. That is why the hourly range in the table starts at $75 and not at $30.

Defining the package in writing

A flat fee only works if the scope is written down. For each package, list what is included (number of meetings, number of vendor categories managed, hours on the day, number of planner staff on the day), what is excluded (HST, permits, travel outside a radius, additional events such as a rehearsal dinner or a mehndi night), and how extras are billed (an hourly rate or a fixed add-on). A multi-day cultural wedding is not one event; price each day.

Questions to ask yourself before quoting

• How many hours will this really take, including the ones I will not remember to bill?
• Does the client’s organization have procurement rules that favour one model? Corporate and charity clients often prefer a flat fee they can defend to a board.
• Will the budget grow during planning? If so, a percentage fee creates an incentive I will have to disclose.
• Is there a second event attached (rehearsal, after-party, a second ceremony day) that needs its own line?
• What is my cancellation term, and does the deposit cover the work I will have done by the likeliest cancellation point?

Explain the fee in one sentence

“My fee is $X, which covers everything from the first meeting to the final invoice, and it is listed as its own line so you can see exactly what the planning costs versus what the event costs.” Clients do not object to fees they can see; they object to fees they discover.

Worked example

For the Harbour Gala, the foundation has a procurement policy and a committee, so we quote a flat production fee of $4,500 shown as its own line, with HST, inside the $25,000 envelope. The committee can defend it to the board because it is explicit.

How the $4,500 was built. Two discovery meetings and the brief: four hours. Venue shortlist, two site visits and the proposal: twelve hours. Planning phase across five months, including committee meetings once a month, vendor contracting, budget updates and the lottery licence paperwork for the 50/50: roughly thirty hours. Production: the run of show, seating with the foundation, vendor confirmations and a hotel walk-through: twelve hours. The day, from a 1 p.m. load-in to a 11:30 p.m. strike: eleven hours, plus an assistant for the evening. Wrap-up, reconciliation and the debrief: six hours. About 75 planner hours plus the assistant, which at the rates above lands between $5,600 and $7,000 at full value. We quoted $4,500 because the envelope was $25,000 and a fee above 18 percent of it would have been hard to defend, and because the foundation is a repeat client. When the envelope grew to $40,000, the fee stayed flat; that is the trade-off of a flat fee, and it is why the workshop budget later shows the fee at $5,085 when HST is included.

Common mistakes

• Pricing from what a competitor charges rather than from hours and costs. Fix: count the hours for one real event and multiply.
• A percentage fee with no cap. Fix: cap it, disclose it, and credit referral fees.
• “Full planning” with no scope list. Fix: included, excluded, extras, in the agreement.
• Forgetting HST on your own fee. Fix: once registered, show it on every quote.
• Balance due after the event. Fix: balance before the event, every time.

Worksheet

Download the worksheet, complete it for your own event (or the running gala example), and keep it in your course binder. It takes about 10 minutes.

Download the worksheet (PDF)