A day-of coordinator quote arrives as one number for a job nobody has described to you. Two coordinators in the same metro will price the same Saturday at $900 and $2,800, and neither email explains the gap. Book on price alone and you learn what was missing in the final week, which is the worst available week to learn it. A day-of wedding coordinator costs $800 to $2,500, and the hours behind that number start six weeks out.
What a day-of coordinator costs
Most couples pay $800 to $2,500 for day-of coordination. Below about $700 you are usually buying a solo operator with no second person on site and a handover that begins two weeks out. Above $2,500 you are buying a large-metro Saturday in season, a team of two, or a calendar that fills a year ahead.
| What the price step buys | Typical national range |
|---|---|
| Solo coordinator, handover about two weeks out | $700 – $1,200 |
| Month-of package, handover at four to six weeks | $1,200 – $2,000 |
| Month-of plus a second coordinator on site | $1,800 – $2,500 |
| Major metro, peak-season Saturday | $2,500 – $3,500+ |
Coordination is the bottom rung of a three-rung ladder. Partial planning runs $2,000 to $6,000 and full-service $3,500 to $15,000 and up, and the way each tier is priced changes as you climb it: coordination is a flat fee against a fixed scope, while full-service is often a percentage that rises with everything else you spend.
Day-of is sold, month-of is delivered
True 24-hour day-of coordination barely exists, whatever the package is called. Nobody walks into a wedding at 8 a.m. having never spoken to the caterer and produces a working day. What that label almost always sells is the last four to six weeks plus the day itself.
The two job titles are not two grades of one product. A planner is hired to make decisions with you across a year; a coordinator is hired to execute decisions you already made, and the line between deciding and executing is the one your contract has to draw. A package that never names a handover date has not drawn it.
So the first question about price is not how much. It is when the work starts. Six weeks is a full package, four is workable, and ten days is a different product at the same number.
The work, week by week
Every coordination quote covers the same seven blocks of work. Pricing them separately turns one number into something you can hold against another.
| When | What gets done, and roughly how long |
|---|---|
| Six weeks out | Handover meeting, reads every signed contract, builds the vendor directory · 4–6 hrs |
| Five to four weeks out | Rebuilds the timeline from the contracts rather than from your spreadsheet · 5–8 hrs |
| Three weeks out | Venue walkthrough, floor plan, load-in route, power and rain plan · 3–4 hrs |
| Two weeks out | Confirms every vendor in writing, by name and arrival time · 4–6 hrs |
| Final week | Final counts, revised timeline out to all parties, personal-item inventory · 4–6 hrs |
| Rehearsal | Runs the processional, sets the cues, briefs the wedding party · 2–3 hrs |
| Wedding day | First delivery to last box out, including breakdown · 10–14 hrs on site |
That ledger sums to between 32 and 47 hours. Call it 40 for a wedding of average size, and note that fewer than a third of those hours fall on the date printed on the invitation. The package is named after the smallest part of it.
The largest single line is the timeline. Couples arrive at the handover with a running order built forward from the ceremony, and the coordinator throws most of it out, because a schedule that holds is built backward from load-in. Hair and makeup, the photographer's start and the caterer's fire-up time all sit upstream of the vows, and none of them move to suit a running order written the other way round.
The two-weeks-out line is the one couples underestimate. Confirming a vendor is not sending a group email. It is reaching a named person at each of twelve to fifteen companies, restating the arrival time, and getting an answer in writing that can be shown to somebody at 7 a.m.
What the day itself looks like
On the day the coordinator is a switchboard, and the order of the cues is the job. The DJ or band takes almost every cue first, because the microphone is what moves 120 people from one room to another, and the photographer, the caterer and the venue follow within a minute of it. One person holding that sequence is the difference between a fifteen-minute delay and a ninety-minute one.
Ask what they arrive carrying. The kit a working coordinator brings is a list of problems they have already watched happen: a steamer, a stain pen, safety pins, a sewing kit, chargers and tape. Someone who turns up with a clipboard and nothing else is charging you for the clipboard.
At the middle of the band, $1,650 across 40 hours is about $41 an hour. The Bureau of Labor Statistics puts the median wage for meeting, convention and event planners at $59,440 a year, or $28.58 an hour across 155,800 jobs, and only 5% of those workers are self-employed. Nearly every wedding coordinator sits in that 5%.
The gap between $41 and $28.58 is not margin. A self-employed coordinator pays self-employment tax of 15.3%, being 12.4% for Social Security and 2.9% for Medicare, out of the fee, before liability insurance, mileage, an assistant's day rate and the unpaid hours spent on couples who never book. Under about $800 the arithmetic stops closing, which is what a $500 quote is telling you.
Ask when the handover starts and how many hours are on site. Two coordinators quoting the same number rarely mean the same job.
What moves the number inside the range
A coordinator's rate is a local number before it is anything else. The same package is $1,100 in a mid-size Midwestern market and $3,500 in Manhattan, which is why we rank coordinators by metro and publish the starting price each one advertises. Five things move the quote once the market is fixed.
- Guest count. Ninety guests and 220 guests are the same six weeks of admin and a very different day. Past roughly 150, most quotes carry a second coordinator whose day rate is inside your fee.
- What the venue owns. A hotel with a house team has absorbed the load-in, the tables and the power. A field has absorbed none of it, and every rented item becomes a delivery window.
- The date. A Saturday between May and October is the scarce inventory. The identical package on a Friday in February is routinely cheaper, and cheaper again on an off-season Sunday.
- Hours on site. Packages cover a fixed number of hours and overtime is billed once that window closes. Ask where the clock starts: first vendor arrival, or ceremony time.
- How many companies you contracted. Six vendors is an evening of confirmations. Fifteen is why the two-weeks-out line runs four to six hours, and fifteen is ordinary once rentals, transport and hair are counted.
The lines that are not in the base fee
Most disputes over a coordination invoice are about scope, not price. These six items are included in some packages and billed separately in others, and the words day-of tell you nothing about which.
- Rehearsal attendance. Standard in month-of packages, often an add-on in true day-of ones. It runs two to three hours and it is where the processional gets solved.
- Breakdown and load-out. Someone returns the rentals, boxes the personal items and is last out. If the package ends at the send-off, that job is yours at midnight.
- Extra site visits. One walkthrough is normal. A second, for a tented wedding or a second location, is usually billed.
- Travel. Mileage beyond a set radius, plus a hotel night for a start before dawn or a finish after midnight.
- Setup of what you brought yourself. Placing 120 place cards, the favors and the signage is real time. Get decor placement named as included or excluded.
- Overtime. Billed by the hour, and it triggers on the venue's clock rather than on yours.
One more line never reaches the invoice. A coordinator who owns the business is not tipped the way venue staff are, but most couples still hand something over at the end of the night, and the coordinator's envelope belongs in the budget rather than in a Thursday scramble for cash.
What a cheap package leaves you doing
A $700 quote is not always a worse coordinator. Often it is a smaller scope, honestly priced. The trouble is that the scope it drops is the scope you were hiring for, and the work does not disappear when the package does.
- You confirm the vendors: twelve to fifteen calls and emails in the same fortnight you are chasing final counts.
- You build the timeline and send it out, then rebuild it when the caterer says load-in needs three hours, not one.
- You run the rehearsal, directing your own family without the authority a hired stranger has automatically.
- You are the phone number on every contract, so deliveries call you or a parent on the wedding morning.
- You own the breakdown. The venue wants the room clear by a contracted hour and the rental company charges for what is not stacked where the invoice says.
The test is simple. Read the package description and count how many of those five it covers. All five for $900 is a coordinator building a portfolio, and that is a good buy. Two of five for $900 is priced correctly for two.
What the fee looks like next to the wedding
The Wedding Report puts the 2025 median wedding spend at $18,231 nationally, $17,647 in Texas and $17,023 in Tennessee, measured from what couples reported spending rather than from vendor price lists. A $1,650 coordinator is about 9% of a median American wedding.
Planning and coordination typically takes 3% to 15% of a budget, and the percentage moves with the total rather than with the work. On a $40,000 wedding, $1,650 is 4% and barely registers. On a $10,000 wedding the same fee is 17%, and it comes out of the flowers or the guest list.
That is the honest version of the worth-it question. The hours do not shrink with the budget: a 60-guest wedding at a venue that owns nothing still needs the timeline rebuilt and the vendors confirmed. Small budgets pay the highest percentage for coordination and often need it most.
When to book and what the retainer buys
Coordination is the cheapest tier on the market and the hardest to add late. For a peak-season Saturday the coordinators worth hiring are reserved 12 to 18 months ahead; off-season and weekday dates carry shorter windows, sometimes two to five months. Couples wait until three months out because the job is called day-of, and by then a September Saturday is gone.
Expect a non-refundable retainer at signing with the balance due in the final weeks. What that retainer holds is a date, not a scope, so the scope has to be written down beside it.
Key takeaways
- Budget $800 to $2,500, and $2,500 to $3,500 or more for a peak Saturday in a major metro.
- Ask when the handover starts before anything else. Six weeks is a full package; ten days is a different product at the same price.
- Price the seven work blocks, not the title. Roughly 40 hours, fewer than a third of them on the wedding day.
- Get rehearsal attendance, breakdown, decor placement, travel and overtime named as included or excluded in writing.
- Run the percentage against your own total. The same $1,650 is 4% of a $40,000 wedding and 17% of a $10,000 one.
- Book 12 to 18 months out for peak season. The work starts six weeks before the date; the calendar closes a year before it.
Frequently asked questions
How much does a day-of wedding coordinator cost?
Most couples pay $800 to $2,500 for day-of coordination. Solo coordinators with a short handover start around $700, and packages in the largest metros for a peak-season Saturday commonly begin at $2,500 and pass $3,500. The market sets the order of magnitude and the scope moves the number inside it.
What does a day-of coordinator actually do?
They take over four to six weeks out, read every signed contract, rebuild the timeline from the vendors' load-in times, confirm each vendor in writing, run the rehearsal, and manage the day from first delivery to last box out. That is roughly 40 hours of work, of which 10 to 14 fall on the wedding day.
What is the difference between day-of and month-of coordination?
Mostly the handover date, and sometimes nothing at all. Month-of names a four-to-six-week start explicitly; day-of can mean the same thing or a two-week handover with no rehearsal. The two are often priced within a few hundred dollars of each other, so the start date is what you are really comparing.
Is a day-of wedding coordinator worth it?
For most weddings with more than about eight separate vendors, yes. The fee buys back the final six weeks and takes you off the phone on the wedding morning. It is worth least at a hotel that runs events weekly and owns the room, the kitchen and the staff, and worth most at a venue that owns nothing but the ground.
How many hours does a day-of coordinator work?
Between 32 and 47 hours in total for a wedding of average size, with 10 to 14 of them on site. The rest spreads across the handover meeting, the timeline rebuild, the walkthrough, vendor confirmations, the final week and the rehearsal. A quote that counts only the day is describing a smaller job.
Do I still need a coordinator if the venue provides one?
Usually yes, because they are two jobs. The venue coordinator is paid by the venue to deliver the building: the room, the house staff and the timings the site supports. Every vendor you contracted yourself still needs someone to confirm, sequence and manage them, and that gap is what a day-of package sells.
How far in advance should I book a day-of coordinator?
Twelve to 18 months out for a Saturday between May and October. Off-season and weekday dates can often be booked two to five months ahead. The work does not begin until six weeks before the wedding, but the booking window is set by the calendar rather than by the workload.
Do you tip a day-of wedding coordinator?
It is common but not obligatory when the coordinator owns the business and set the price. Owners are tipped less consistently than staff, while an assistant working the day for a company is tipped more like other vendors' crews. Decide the amount when you sign and put the cash in a labeled envelope someone else delivers.
Can a friend or family member do it instead?
Rarely, and it fails on the day, which is the worst time to find out. The role needs someone with the standing to tell a caterer they are running late and no stake in the seating chart. Anyone invited as a guest is a guest by about four in the afternoon.
Why is one coordinator $900 and another $2,800?
Four things, in order: the metro, when the handover starts, whether a second coordinator is on site, and how many hours the contract covers. A $900 quote with a two-week handover and no rehearsal is not underpriced; it is a smaller scope. Compare the seven work blocks side by side and most of the gap explains itself.
What should be in a day-of coordination contract?
A named handover date, the hours on site with a stated start and end, whether the rehearsal is included, whether breakdown and rental return are included, and the overtime rate. Add the substitution clause covering what happens if the coordinator cannot work your date, and the terms for a postponement.