Wedding planning is sold by package name: full-service, partial, month-of. None of those names says what a wedding planner actually does for the money, and the distance between $800 and $15,000 is a distance in duties, not effort. Mapped against the phases of an engagement, the job splits into four blocks of work. Each tier buys a different subset of them, and the names never tell you which.
Phase one: planning and design
The first block of work runs from booking to roughly the halfway point of an engagement, and it produces decision infrastructure: a budget, a venue, a date and a design direction. A full-service planner builds all four with you. Every other tier assumes they already exist.
The budget comes first because every later duty hangs on it. A planner's opening session prices your guest count against your total using real local rates rather than hopes; set against the 2025 national median wedding spend of $18,231, that arithmetic usually shortens something, and month one is the cheapest possible time to shorten it.
Venue search is the second deliverable. A planner turns a market's worth of options into a shortlist of three to five that fit the headcount, the date and the money, walks them with you, and reads the contract before a deposit moves. Design runs alongside: palette, rentals, lighting and florals resolved into one document a florist can quote against.
What stays with you: every decision. The planner narrows a hundred venues to three; you pick one. They draft the budget; you approve the trade-offs inside it.
Phase two: vendor management
The middle of an engagement is a hiring project. A typical wedding means contracting somewhere between eight and fifteen separate companies once rentals, transport, hair and the cake are counted, and hiring wedding vendors in sequence is the planner's core deliverable: photographer and caterer early, because they book out first; transport and rentals late, once the headcount is firm.
For each vendor the planner runs the same loop: source candidates inside your price band, collect quotes that compare like with like, and read the contract before you sign it. Contract review is where the fee quietly earns money back. Overtime clauses, service charges, delivery windows and cancellation terms all cost real dollars when nobody reads them, and a planner reads them for a living.
After signing, the duty shifts to administration: a payment calendar of every deposit and balance date, and a single point of contact, so that a dozen companies ask the planner their questions instead of asking you.
What stays with you: signatures and money. Vendors contract with you, not with the planner, and every payment leaves your account.
Phase three: the final six weeks
Around six weeks out, planning stops producing new decisions and turns into confirmation. This block is the entire product a month-of coordinator sells, and it is the block couples most often underestimate: a year of decisions compressed into a document other people can execute.
- Re-confirmation calls to every vendor: arrival time, load-in door, contact name for the day, and what happens if they run late.
- A production timeline in fifteen-minute increments, from first delivery to last box out, distributed to every vendor.
- Final counts to the caterer and the rental company, and a seating chart locked against the floor plan.
- The rehearsal, run start to finish, usually the day before.
What stays with you in a month-of arrangement is everything before this point. The coordinator executes the plan you built, and a plan with gaps gets executed with gaps.
Phase four: the wedding day
The working day starts with the first delivery truck and ends when the last rental is boxed, usually twelve hours or more later. The planner runs it as a production: vendors checked in against the timeline, the room set and inspected before doors open, the ceremony cued, the caterer's service synced to the toasts, and the band's breaks placed where the room will not notice them.
The planner is also the day's spokesperson. Every question a vendor would have brought to you, where this table goes, when the cake gets cut, whether the band can run five minutes over, goes to the planner instead. When something goes wrong, the fix happens out of sight, which is most of what the day rate buys.
What stays with you: nothing that can be delegated. This is the one phase where the transfer of work is total.
A package name is a word. A duty list is a contract term. Only one of the two is enforceable.
What each tier covers
Every tier prices the same four phases differently, and what each tier costs is a market number as much as a scope number. The scope pattern, though, is consistent across markets.
| Tier | Phases covered |
|---|---|
| Full-service ($3,500 – $15,000+) | All four, from budget build to last box out |
| Partial planning ($2,000 – $6,000) | Joins mid-engagement: phases two through four |
| Month-of coordination ($800 – $2,500) | Phases three and four only |
The hours behind those prices are the fairest way to compare them. The Bureau of Labor Statistics puts the median wage for meeting, convention and event planners at $28.58 an hour, so a $7,000 full-service fee represents roughly 245 hours of work, a $4,000 partial engagement about 140, and a $1,650 month-of fee about 58. Set a package's promised scope against those hours and thin packages surface fast: four phases of duties do not fit in 58 hours.
Package names drift between markets and between businesses; the same phrase can cover three different scopes in one city. Our listings state the tier and a starting price for exactly this reason, and the tiers Austin planners publish show how wide one market's spread runs.
What a wedding planner does not do
- Decide. A planner narrows every choice to two or three options and prices each; the picking is yours, all year.
- Sign or spend. Contracts and payments run through you. A planner who asks to hold your vendor payments is a warning sign, not a convenience.
- Reprice a signed contract. Negotiation happens before signatures. Once the venue's per-head is inked, no tier of planner changes it.
- Replace the venue's coordinator, or be replaced by them. The venue's coordinator delivers the building; your planner manages everything you contracted separately.
How to verify the duties before signing
Duties live in the scope section of the contract, not in the package name or the warmth of the first meeting. Read for the handover date, the number of planning meetings included, whether the day is staffed by the person you met or by an assistant, and what an added event costs. The questions that expose a thin package are the specific ones: when the timeline gets built, who makes the re-confirmation calls, and how many hours the day rate includes.
The same logic runs through our rankings. The duties a listing verifies before a planner ranks include a stated tier, a published starting price and a track record counted in weddings rather than adjectives.
Key takeaways
- The job is four phases: planning and design, vendor management, the final six weeks, and the day. Tiers are subsets of the phases, not levels of effort.
- Vendor management is the core duty: eight to fifteen companies sourced, contracted, sequenced and paid on schedule.
- Convert fees to hours at the $28.58 government median wage: about 245 hours behind a $7,000 full-service fee, about 58 behind a $1,650 month-of fee.
- Decisions, signatures and payments stay with you in every tier.
- Buy the duty list, not the package name. Verify the handover date, the meeting count and the day staffing in the contract before signing.
Frequently asked questions
What does a wedding planner do on the wedding day?
They run the day as a production: check every vendor in against the timeline, set and inspect the room before doors open, cue the ceremony and the toasts, and field every question a vendor would otherwise bring to you. The working day runs from the first delivery to the last box packed, usually twelve hours or more. Problems get fixed out of sight.
What is the difference between full-service, partial and month-of planning?
The difference is which phases of the job you buy. Full-service, $3,500 to $15,000 and up, covers all four phases from budget build onward. Partial planning, $2,000 to $6,000, joins mid-engagement once the venue is booked, and month-of coordination, $800 to $2,500, covers only the final six weeks and the day itself.
Do wedding planners handle the budget?
Full-service planners build it as their first deliverable, pricing your guest count against your total with real local rates, then track it through a payment calendar all year. Partial and month-of tiers assume the budget already exists and manage inside it. No tier can rescue a total and a guest list that were never compatible.
Do wedding planners book vendors for you?
They do everything except sign and pay. A planner sources candidates inside your price band, collects comparable quotes, negotiates terms and reads the contract, but the contract is between you and the vendor, and payments leave your account. A planner who wants to hold your vendor money is a warning sign.
How many hours does a wedding planner spend on a wedding?
The fee tells you, once it is converted at the government median wage for event planners of $28.58 an hour. A $1,650 month-of fee works out to about 58 hours; a $4,000 partial engagement to about 140; a $7,000 full-service fee to roughly 245. If a package promises full-service scope at month-of hours, the scope is not real.
Does a wedding planner also design the wedding?
Full-service usually includes design direction: palette, rentals, lighting and florals resolved into a document vendors can quote against. Some planners sell design as a separate service, typically $1,500 to $6,000, with no logistics attached. Styling, the physical placement of it all, happens in the final week and on the morning of.
When does a month-of coordinator actually start?
Handover is usually four to six weeks before the wedding, and six is better than four; the date should be written into the contract. Booking happens far earlier, since coordinators with a track record are reserved 12 to 18 months ahead for peak-season Saturdays. The work window and the booking window are different clocks.
Do I still make the decisions with a full-service planner?
Yes, all of them. The planner's job is to narrow each choice to a few priced options and tell you what every trade-off costs; yours is to pick. Nothing gets signed, spent or confirmed without your approval, in any tier.
What is not included in a wedding planner's package?
Signing, spending and repricing. Contracts and payments stay in your name, and a signed per-head cannot be negotiated down afterward by any planner. Extra events like a welcome party or farewell brunch are commonly billed as additions, so check what an added event costs before assuming the fee covers the weekend.
How do I know what a planner's package actually includes?
Read the scope section of the contract, because package names are not standardized between businesses. Look for the handover date, the number of planning meetings, who staffs the wedding day and for how many hours, and the price of adding an event. If a duty is not written there, it is not part of the package.