When it comes to wedding planning, there seems to be a hesitancy to give couples the real numbers that it will take to achieve their dream wedding for fear that it will scare them away from using that venue or vendor, but sugar-coating the reality and the budget that the couples need to have is not doing them any favors.
Recently, I came across some information that was put out to newly engaged couples on the average costs for a New Orleans wedding by an industry leader in weddings, The Knot. As I was reading through the breakdown, I was in shock at how extremely off the numbers were that they were putting out as info into the world. So, as much as I adore the Knot for all the good that they do for couples, let’s set the record straight with some real, in the trenches insight and real numbers from weddings that have been done in New Orleans. No fancy algorithm, just hard facts and numbers. So let's break down the average wedding budget for a New Orleans wedding from picking the venue to "I Do".
The information I am putting out is based on a number of factors. The first is real numbers from actual weddings that I have done with my couples over the last 3years in New Orleans. These are couples that have hosted their wedding in New Orleans as both locals and those coming into town to do a destination wedding. The second source is directly from my vendors and venues. Asking them for numbers for all sorts of scenarios and putting all of that information into the biggest spreadsheet I’ve ever made, and that includes the spreadsheet that I used to plan my own wedding back in 2011. When you’re talking about weddings, the first thing every couple wants is real numbers of what their dream wedding is going to cost. There have been far too many couples that I have talked to that started out planning with a budget in mind, booked their venue and date based on that budget and then as they started to book their other vendors, realized quickly that they were in the weeds and completely lost as to how their budget blew up so quickly and how to make it all work from that point. I never want anyone to feel like they have run out of wedding money as soon as they start planning. So, here it is, months’ worth of work and details and information and most importantly, real numbers to give you a better understanding of everything for your wedding up front.
Guide to Your Wedding Budget Breakdown by Vendor:
The Venue:
The very first decision any couple will make for their wedding planning is to pick a venue and book their wedding date at that venue. In order to do that, you have to start at home with a number of factors, the first being your budget. As I’ve said before in the blog on how to reduce wedding planning stress, you need to make 2 budgets: Your absolute max and where you want to ideally be financially, then plan everything with the lesser budget in mind. Giving yourself the financial wiggle room will save you a lot of stress especially at the end for any unexpected expenses. From there, a preliminary guest list needs to be made so you can see an estimate of how many people you want to invite.
You’ll then need to start thinking of the overall look and feel you would like for your wedding. Write all of your ideas down and keep that for reference. You may not be able to imagine the exact venue, but giving all the tidbits of ideas to your planner will help to narrow down the mental Rolodex of venues they have to help you to find the ideal location for your wedding. Your planner can also help you to find venues that work with your overall wedding budget.
Some of the things that will come up during your venue search to consider when factoring in the cost of the venue:
Is catering and bar service included with the venue’s overall cost or do you need to bring in an outside caterer and bar service vendor? Does the venue provide tables, chairs, linens etc. or do you have to have that brought in through another vendor? If you are doing the ceremony and reception at the same location, is there an added fee for the ceremony being on-site or do you have to extend the rental of the entire venue by another hour in order to do the ceremony?
There are lots of factors in play when picking a venue, which is where it helps to have a wedding planner to help you from the very beginning of planning, so that they can assist you with checking off all the boxes that you need and that the venue offers and at the best price.
Now that you have a few venue ideas for look and feel, the next thing is going to be finding the venue that works best for the guest count you want to have for your event. There are venues that can only hold a max of 75 guests and there are venues where if you only have 75 guests, it’s just too much space and not enough people to fill it. So, capacity matters not just in how many you can get into the space but also what amount is too small to look best without having to spend extra money to take up the excess space.
For the venues that have food and beverage included and offer ceremony as part of a package price, let’s break it down based on guest count and then we can look at the difference between overall budget and venue cost.
All of these include the Venue for Ceremony and Reception, Food and Beverage, Tables, Chairs, and Linens:
50 guests – average range is between $11,000-16,000
100 guests – average range is between $14,000 – 20,000
150 guests – average range is between $18,000 – 30,000
200 guests – average starting cost is around $30,000 +
Most venues have a food and beverage minimum spend depending on the date or day of the week. What this means is that if your 150-person wedding is on a Saturday, your “f&b min” may be $20,000 on top of the venue rental costs. So how do we get those numbers: On average, the food costs can range from $55-105pp and bar packages can range from $39-72pp depending on what level of bar you choose. These are also costs on top of those numbers such as taxes, charges for staff, or included gratuity for the cooks and servers, so make sure you don’t forget to check the fine print on all menus and materials the venues give you.
As Franc’s assistant says in Father of the Bride “I hear you panicking but…” keep in mind that the overwhelming numbers you just read through is what we as wedding planners do all day long for our couples. So, if anyone asks why they need a wedding planner, you may have just realized why. If you are ready to have the planners at Pennywell Events jump in, we are ready!
Quick breakdown for overall wedding budgets and estimated guest count:
50 guests – average range is between $28,000 – 36,000
100 guests – average range is between $40,000 – 50,000
150 guests – average range is between $55,000 – 69,000
200 guests – average range is between $65,000 – 80,000
Photographers:
We LOVE our photographers, especially the ones that don’t just take amazing photos but are genuinely wonderful, pleasant, and kind people to work alongside on a wedding day and beyond. I say it often, that without our photographers and videographers, we would have nothing to show for all of our hard work other than the random photos I can snap with my cell phone throughout the day, which are usually ok at best. A professional photographer is worth their weight in gold to most wedding vendors because they have a talent for making our work look its absolute best.
Finding the right photographer for your wedding day comes down to so much more than just what photos they produce. Your photo team will be with you and your significant other all day long on your wedding day. They will be with you more than your own mother, your best friend, and even your significant other. If you don’t click with them personality wise, you may ultimately wind up hating your photographer if you don’t vibe well together. So how do you ensure that you will love your photographer? First, this is something that your wedding planner can help with. We work with a lot of the same photographers over and over again and we can give you insight as to how they work and sometimes we can even pair you with the photographer that we think will become a new family bestie at the end of your wedding day. From there, having a phone call, zoom call, or coffee meet up to discuss your wedding day in person with the photographer can be a huge benefit to finding the right fit.
On average, most couples need at least 8hrs of photo coverage for their wedding day.
This includes Pre-ceremony photos of each of you getting ready, detail shots, photos with your families and/or wedding attendants, a first look or alternative photos, Ceremony, Cocktail Hour or half hour, possible second line, 3.5-4hr reception and an exit at the end of the evening, whether that includes a photo sendoff or an end of the night second line to your after party if you didn’t need to do a second line between ceremony and reception.
For most of the photographers that we work with, for 8hrs of coverage, that includes the main photographer and a second photographer, often referred to as a “second shooter”.
So now, what is this going to cost. I can hear you all from this side of my keyboard waiting in anticipation.
The cost for 2 photographers for 8hrs of coverage ranges between $4400-5400, with the average spending about $4700. This is not to say that the price for your specific event is exact and it could go up or down depending on the experience level of the photographer, time of year, and the needs of your own event. The ultimate goal here is to supply you with the knowledge to go into a meeting or consultation with a photographer and have a better idea of what it might cost without having sticker shock when they send you their proposal.
Now, what did the Knot say that the average cost of a photographer for a New Orleans wedding was? $1200-3000. No wonder so many couples start off planning feeling like they are being overcharged and given some premium price for their event from the vendors they are speaking with.
Videographers:
Here’s the good news, Videographers are not going to break your budget and yes, you can afford to have one. Some Photographers also offer a video addition to their packages, which can be helpful if you like their style and their vibe.
A videographer is one of those vendors where you can really get extra creative with the style and purpose. Some videographers can do a legacy video, which is what you may think of watching your grandparents video reel or your parents wedding VHS tapes, it’s something that will be put together with the idea of it becoming a long-lasting piece of your family lore to share for generations to come. Then there are the content creator videographers that do more social media style videos and fun moments throughout the day to post for your friends and family until they beg for you to post a photo of your dinner again instead of your wedding highlights. And then there are the super niche videographers that are pulling out the old school styles like Super 8 film and VHS shoulder-ruining video cameras that will capture your day in a way that the 90s never could have anticipated. There are so many different styles to choose from when it comes to video coverage to really make your wedding memories as unique as your love story.
Depending on what kind of style you go with and if you have bundled your savings with your photographer like Flo from Progressive, a videographer can range in price from $2500-6500 with on average spend of $4200.
Florist:
The number one stressor for all couples across the globe. To go with real flowers, silk, foam, dried, felted, or Lego, and to choose colors, specific flowers, arrangements; it all gets to be very overwhelming and fast. There is one thing that I have said for years that I will continue to repeat until the very end, “I have many talents in this world, but floral is not one of them. Hire a professional.” Because when it comes to flowers, if you don’t live and breathe flowers all day every day, it can be the one thing that makes you scrap the entire day and run to the nearest courthouse to elope. Having a professional that understands what you’re talking about and can guide you to the right look and feel is invaluable. So for the expertise to analyze your floral dreams, what does that look like?
First, we need to talk about the fact that the florals for any wedding is where the sticker shock hits hardest. It’s not that the florals are not completely worth every cent, but when we see day in and day out that Walmart offers subpar bouquets for $6, it’s hard to imagine that a bridal bouquet would be much more than that, right? And yes, I hear all of my florists collectively sighing right now. So, here’s the big difference in that $6 bouquet from Walmart vs your bridal bouquet or the centerpieces that your guests will see as they enter into your reception. Quality. And I’m not just referring to the quality of the flowers, although that’s a huge part of it. But when you get a custom created bouquet made for your wedding, it has about 25-30 stems that includes the focal flowers, secondary, filler flowers, and greenery. All of it carefully crafted by someone who has taken the time to learn and hone those skills over years to know how to balance the bouquet from every angle, to give it the shape that you desire, and to make sure the structure of the entire thing lasts throughout the entire day of movement and photos without looking beat up or drooping after 20min out of water. And yes, part of that is because of the quality of the flowers that you are getting through a professional florist because it matters to them the quality that they provide for you.
But what if you want to go with silk flowers? Are you buying your own from your local craft store and putting together your own bouquets, corsages, boutonnieres, centerpieces, etc. or are you renting your already put together floral items? This would all depend on the space you have available and the time and skills you have for such things. Rental silks are a wedding planners’ dream because there’s no water to contend with, they show up ready right out of the box, and at the end of the night, they get shipped back to their home, the rental place. With silks that you purchase and create, at the end of the wedding, they all get delivered back to you. If you’re a destination couple, this either means having someone drive them all back to your house or pay to have them all shipped back to you. The same can be said for foam flowers. I have yet to come across a company that rents dried, felted or Lego flowers, so all of those would have to be purchased.
Floral Budget breakdown:
Real flowers:
Bridal bouquet: price ranges from $225-350 with the average being around $280
Bridesmaid bouquets: price ranges from $75-150 with the average being $115
Boutonnieres: price ranges from $15-30 with the average being around $20
Corsages: price ranges from $33-55 with the average being around $40
Centerpieces: price ranges from $35-700 with the average being around $190
Large Floral Installations such as having a Gazebo or Arch covered in florals and greenery or a Broken Arch for your ceremony: price ranges from $600-2000 with the average being around $1200
Silk Flowers (Rentals):
Bridal bouquet: price ranges from $44-80 with the average being around $65
Bridesmaid bouquets: price ranges from $28-40 with the average being around $35
Boutonnieres: price ranges from $6-14 with the average being around $7
Corsages: price ranges from $12-15 with the average being around $12
Centerpieces: price ranges from $28-138 depending on the size and accessories
Dried Flowers:
Bridal bouquet: price ranges from $14-330 depending on size and flowers included
Bridesmaid bouquets: price ranges from $35-95
Boutonnieres: price ranges from $11-17
Corsages: price ranges from $13-28
Centerpieces: price ranges from $13-318 depending on the size
Music: DJ/Band
Imagine your wedding day having a soundtrack of music in the background to highlight those special moments. Having picked out the songs for when you each walk down the aisle, your first dance together as a married couple, and even your end of the night song where you get everyone out there to dance with you one last time will be the songs that every time they come on the radio, will spark those memories of that specific moment from your wedding day. An involuntary smile spreads across your face as you remember fondly just how your husband or wife looked in that moment.
When it comes to the entertainment for your wedding, choosing a DJ or Band/Live Musicians can be one of those fun vendors to choose, but also remember the major impact that this vendor will have on the overall look and feel of the day, can make it one of the most important decisions. With that being said, making sure that you are hiring a quality DJ or Band that is reliable and can bring the party vibe to the dance floor is something that we need to discuss.
Picture this, you’re at a great local brewery or restaurant that has a house DJ, the tunes are just right, everyone is having a good time and you like the vibe. Now, look around, how many people are out dancing? If the answer is none, then that DJ is either doing their job perfectly for where they are or they just don’t get the vibe. Now, think of the last fun wedding you went to. The dance floor is packed all night, the DJ or Band is playing song after song that lure you back again and again until your feet feel like they may fall off at the end of the night. That is the type of entertainer you want. The difference is the entertainer (DJ or Band) that understands the dynamics of a wedding dance floor. You have generations that span from The Silent Generation and Baby Boomers to Gen Z and Alpha, and you need music that will appeal to all of them to shake their groove thang. If the lyrics to your songs are all on the Explicit side, you’ll alienate most of the guests over the age of 40. If all of your songs are techno, your guests will ask if they missed the invite to the rave. Finding that right mix between Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’” and Haley Reinhart’s “Can’t Help Falling in Love” will ensure that every guest leaves your wedding saying “that was a fantastic party!”.
So, what kind of cost are you looking at, realistically, for these masters of entertainment?
DJ:
Ceremony, Cocktails, and 4hr Reception (5hrs): $1500-5000
Reception only (4hrs): $1200-3000
On average, most couples are spending about $1900-2200 for their DJs
Band:
Ceremony, Cocktails, and 4hr Reception (5hrs): $4500-9000
Reception only (4hrs): $3000-5000
On average, most couples are spending about $3800-6000 for their Wedding Band depending on amount of band members and length of performance.
Second Line:
As a Wedding Tradition that is rooted in New Orleans, this is one of those vendors that for any destination wedding couple looking to give their guests a true taste of New Orleans, especially when getting married in the French Quarter, is the top of so many wedding must-have lists. A parade through the streets of the city specifically to celebrate your new marriage, is a wedding tradition that you can really only experience to the full extent in New Orleans. There is an entire blog on the New Orleans Second Line Parades for weddings that you can check out here if you’d like more details.
What is needed for a New Orleans Second Line Parade?
-A Second Line Band or a Brass Band
-A police/sheriff escort*
-A parade permit from the city*
-A planned parade route that sticks to the strict rules of the city and flow of traffic*
*(these can be handled by either your wedding planner or your second line band, they cannot be skipped and bands will not parade without a permit and escort)
A Second Line Parade has a lot of factors that will determine the overall cost such as:
-The number of guests participating
-The parade route which will determine the number of police escorts you’ll need to keep your parading guests safe
-Additional entertainment elements such as a Grand Marshall, stilt walkers, parade revelers in costumes, etc.
-Pedicabs needed for your mobility challenged guests to participate in the parade
So, let’s focus on the basics so that you can choose what kind of experience you want for your guests.
Second Line for 100 or less guests:
Second Line Brass Band with parade route planning, escort set-up, and permits filed for you: $1400-1800
Second Line Brass Band without parade planning and permits, and escort set-up. For the band only without parade planning ranges from $800-1200 This will require you to have to take care of these things or have your local wedding planner create a route, file the permits, and set up the escorts for you and then send the invoices for all of these to you to pay separately: The city permit is $100. Police or Sheriff escorts can range from $400-600 depending on a number of factors like guest count and parade route safety needs.
Bakery:
When it comes to your wedding cake or alternative wedding dessert, there are a TON of options to choose from, so I’ll lay out some options to give you a better sense of the overall cost but ultimately, finding the right bakery will provide you with the most solid answers for your event.
Wedding Cakes:
There are a lot of options but one way that a lot of couples are keeping their overall costs low are things like having a small “cut cake” to be displayed and in photos and then having a “kitchen cake” or sheet cake in the kitchen to serve to guests. The kitchen cake doesn’t have to be as pretty as your display/cut cake, it just has to be delicious!
It used to be that couples would offer cupcake versions of their wedding cake but even those costs were not nearly as good as the kitchen cake option.
To Tier or not to tier:
In New Orleans, there is the Chantilly cake. A soft, fluffy, delicious cake that will take your breath away, but it is too soft of a cake and icing to have it displayed in a traditional tiered cake. For this, we lean on the multi-tier cake stands. Each tier has its own stand next to one another, so it has more of a vintage feel and does require a bigger cake table than the traditional circle cake table, but it is absolutely worth it!
A tiered cake is typically fondant or buttercream and tends to be made of a traditional cake mix because it’s able to withstand a bit more than the Chantilly. For these, you can have a different flavor in each tier or have it your favorite flavor from top to bottom. Tiered traditional cakes do also lend themselves better to more creative avenues, so they do appeal to a wider audience.
Is it cake?
And my favorite wedding cake option that has come back from the days of weddings past, the faux cake or the Styrofoam cake form. There is a small bit of real cake placed onto the form for you to cut the cake and have beautiful photos, but the rest of the cake is decorated to look like a normal cake but there is only Styrofoam under the fondant or buttercream. It’s a brilliant alternative that can save you bundles. Then, the only thing you are really paying for is the decorating of the form and the kitchen cake to serve to guests.
How much cake should you order?
Let’s be honest, we all probably know more people who will say they are giving up sugar, on a diet, or something along those lines so they are not going to eat cake or dessert of any sort. From my experience of seeing a lot of cake go to waste, I recommend having enough cake for about 70% of your guests.
How much?
As George Banks says in Father of the Bride, “A cake, Franck, is made of flour and water. My first car didn't cost $1200”.
While a wedding cake is going to be more expensive than your average birthday cake, even if it is just “flour and water”, what you are paying for is the expertise, the craftsmanship, and the most nerve-wracking delivery ever. You are also paying for the quality because it’s not just the Funfetti cake mix from a box with that basic icing you got from the bottom shelf at Walmart. And this is not just any old everyday cake, this is a wedding cake. It’s going to be in photos that you show your grandchildren and it’s going to be the taste that is usually the last thing your guests consume at your wedding short of their drinks. You want this to be the mind-blowing flavor that makes your picky aunt go back for a second slice.
Onto that pesky cost question: These are actual costs from weddings that we have done over the last few years from local bakeries in New Orleans.
Traditional Tiered Wedding Cakes
4-tier wedding cake with buttercream icing $975
3-tier wedding cake with buttercream icing $585
2-tier wedding cake with buttercream icing $240
Chantilly Cakes
One 10” Chantilly Cake (Display) and 2 half sheet cake Chantilly cakes of the same flavor (kitchen cakes) $650
3 of the 8” Chantilly cakes, 2 of the 10” Chantilly cakes all on individual cake stands at different heights $545
Fondant Cakes
A 2-tier Fondant specialty design split (his and hers) cake $757
A custom 1-tier specialty fondant cake $525
Hair and Make-up
Bridal $85-125 per service (hair or make-up), total for both $170-250
Bridesmaids and Moms $50-75 per service
Officiant:
As the person that will be marrying you, this truly needs to be someone that you connect with and someone you trust. Whether that is a personal friend or family member or a professional, hired officiant, it’s something that will make a difference in the emotion and flow of your ceremony.
For a personal touch for your ceremony, I have an entire blog put together on how to get your friend or family member ordained and ready to legally marry you here.
If you want to hire a professional officiant, there are numerous options to choose from across the city. This is absolutely something that your wedding planner will have recommendations for to help you to narrow down the long list of options. The best thing will be to take the time to think about the type of ceremony you want. Do you want something secular or religious? A serious tone or something with a few humorous lines thrown in to keep things light? Do you want someone who knows how and can perform certain marriage rituals such as hand-tying, red thread, or one of the variations of the unity candle? The only thing that you absolutely need is to have them be on good standing to legally marry you if you are not already legally married (and yes, there are many couples that do get legally married before their wedding day for a myriad of personal reasons). From there, you need to work together as a couple to list out what aspects of your ceremony are most important to make your marriage feel unique to the two of you, but that also will make the ceremony give you the sense of feeling whole and complete as a start to your marriage. For some couples, it’s the feeling of security in repeating the traditional vows that their parents and grandparents said on their wedding day. For others, it’s sharing their own words and feelings between one another as a personalized declaration of their relationship as they begin the next chapter together. At the end of the day, the ceremony is about the two of you joining together as a couple in marriage, so if you include family traditions or make your own, make it yours.
On average, a professional wedding officiant ranges in price from $300-1800.
Wedding Coordinator and Wedding Planner:
This journey started during the last Bridal show that I did where the number one thing that I was hearing was that the couples just didn’t know what any of the wedding vendors cost and so many of them felt lost and overwhelmed. Then, a few months back, I came across the info block below from The Knot on their estimated breakdown of costs for a New Orleans wedding. When I saw the estimated price range for a Wedding Planner, I was dumbfounded. Their price range started at $237 for a Wedding Planner. Any wedding planner will tell you that even as a brand-new planner that on average they were charging between $500-600 for their first weddings as pros. For $237, you would be better off “hiring” your aunt who just really wants to help; that’s not the cost of a professional at any time in their career. But it’s the other end of the range that got me, $2016. There was no context as to if that was the average range for the starting cost for a Wedding Planner or if they were alluding to that being the minimum and maximum that a couple should expect to pay for everything from Day of Coordination to Full Planning.
There was only this:
“Factors that influence cost:
-Scope of planning services (ex. Full service, month-of and day-of)
-Planning package fee structure (flat fee, hourly or percentage)
-Number of team members involved with your event
-Travel fees and gratuity
The numbers did not reflect the actual market of New Orleans nor did it give any sort of information to help couples to better understand where their numbers came from short of this “Info blurb”.
“Average costs are based on reported spend from thousands of recently married couples in the U.S. collected through The Knot’s research studies (2022-present). Actual costs will vary.”
It makes me want to pull a Julia Roberts from Mona Lisa Smile and walk around yelling “What does that mean?!”.
So as a planner in the New Orleans area who desperately wants you, the reader, and all couples looking to get married to just have the basic information in front of you to make the best, informed decision when planning your wedding, let me be as transparent as possible.
As a new planner to the industry under my own brand, and not under someone else, with zero reviews and no weddings been done under Pennywell Events LLC, I got tremendously lucky in two ways. The first being that Emi and Nate took a chance on someone who’s business had nothing to show them for experience and only the work I’d done under someone else. They trusted me to pull it all together, get it done, and make sure they were taken care of completely on their wedding day. And I did. But their wedding was also almost exactly 2 weeks before the world shut down for Covid. Within a week after their wedding, I had my first review. I won’t bore you all with the details, but just know that I cried happy tears in the lobby of an oil change when I read it. For Emi and Nate’s wedding, I charged then a total of $650 and I relished in every dollar because it meant I could pay to keep the website going that I had made for the business; I could pay for the LLC and the business insurance for the year. The second way that I got lucky was that because of that 1 review from Emi and Nate, even during a global pandemic, the business kept going. I was able to do 1 more wedding that year with every precaution and safety measure in place and I pulled it off. From there, the business doubled and sometimes tripled in weddings every year.
As a business owner and full-time wedding planner that has planned and executed more than 50 weddings since March 2020 under her own company, I have been able to expand the business to have an associate planner and a number of assistants. I share my knowledge of the industry with others looking to learn and am constantly working to gain more knowledge to benefit my couples and the community of venues and vendors that I trust throughout the city and the country. But what does that mean for you, the engaged couples looking to get married? It’s all about the experience. Not my experience, yours. I can have all the knowledge in the world about weddings, but if I am not using that knowledge for your benefit, and to make your wedding planning a stress-free and enjoyable process, then I may as well shut the doors. My time in the industry has given me the opportunities to learn how to serve my couples better, to be the best planner and the best wedding resource to each of you. To share my knowledge to make your wedding planning easier and cost efficient.
Let’s break down the cost:
On average, my Event Management couples are with me from between 2 months to a year. I do not call it Month of Coordination or Day of Coordination because myself and my team are working with you for the entire time from when you sign that contract until the end of your wedding weekend. We set up calls to check in with you regularly, we help to answer your questions about vendors and what would be the best route for you to plan to stay within budget. And we take the time to get to know you as a couple. At the two-month out mark from your wedding, we have the preliminary timeline already put together and ready to go through it with you. (Two months out is about the time you start to get those questions from the moms about schedules for the day.) We coordinate with your vendors that you have hired, gather intel from you about those special moments that you want to happen, and we finalize all the little details with you and your vendors to make sure that nothing is missed (hello forgotten linens for the catering tables). We lead the rehearsals that are not in a church. On the wedding day, we are there from the start of the day until the last item is boxed up and loaded up to return to you by our team. We leave nothing to chance and over-deliver every time because you deserve to have one day where you don’t have to worry about anything. Our price range currently is $2500-4000 for this level of service.
Partial Planning and Full Planning really come down to what our couples need from us. Do they need help to plan everything from narrowing down the hundreds of venues to the best one for them based on their guest count expectations and their overall wedding budget? Are each of them buried in work and have so little free time that they often feel like two passing ships in the night as they work to build their careers? For those couples, yes, Full Planning is absolutely what they need. To have someone who can listen to what they want and what they need and be able to craft it and cater the overwhelming possibilities down to a few simple choices for them to pick from. To alleviate the guess work and the late-night research for vendors and make it work for them from an hour-long phone call once a month. Full Planning is the level of service that really begins at the point of the book that reads “Once upon a time…”. The possibilities are open and endless but the current range does not and spans from $5500-7000.
On the other hand, the couples that have their wedding venue and date booked already, that have been Instagram stalking their dream photographer for months, and know the general feeling that they want their guests to experience but have run into a wall with planning. Past the obvious big items that have been on their fantasy wedding lineup for a while, some couples struggle to be able to plan past the initial “must haves” and start to feel like they are sinking from all the back-end work of figuring out the next steps. Wanting to plan more and do it all and knowing how to or where to look for the best options is the biggest struggle for so many couples. These are the couples that thrive with a partial amount of help in planning. The current range is from $4000-5500.
Wedding Consultant
There is also the option to just have an hour-by-hour wedding consultant. These are not in-person, on the wedding day wedding planners or coordinators. This is more along the lines of someone who needs some planning guidance on one or two specific needs while they are planning their own wedding and are not planning to have a coordinator on-site for their wedding day. Or they have a coordinator that does not start working with them until 6-8weeks out from the wedding so they reach out to a Wedding Consultant to ask questions while they plan everything solo. A Wedding Consultant can range from $150-500 per session.
Why the range?
Your wedding day is very similar to your love story. Each story we work to tell is as unique as the people in that relationship, so how can we say that every couple that needs this level of service has the same needs? We simply cannot.
Finding the Right Planner:
When finding the ideal wedding planner or coordinator for you, there are a few things to keep in mind that will help you narrow down the pages and pages of planners.
Are you looking for a Luxury planner? Typically, these are planners that cater to those with a larger wedding budget in the 100k + range and weddings that have 350 or more guests.
Are you ok with having a planner that is just starting out and has little to no experience or would you feel uneasy about this idea for such a big day?
What are some things that you feel you want from your planner or coordinator? Do they need to have a team that works events with them or are they working solo? Are you looking for a planning firm that has 20+ planners that work for them or are you wanting to work specifically with one planner that you know who you are getting at the beginning of the relationship?
Do you want a planner that also designs your wedding for you or with you? Or do you know what you want and just need help getting the look and feel from your team of vendors? There is a difference in a Wedding Designer and a Wedding Planner, and knowing the difference in what you want and need can help tremendously.
Knowing what kind of wedding you want and what kind of help you need will narrow down the vast price ranges below to a suitable range that is more appropriate to what you need for your wedding.
What is the average cost in New Orleans for any and all coordinators and planners for these levels of service?
Wedding Coordination: Ranges from $525 - $5,000
Partial Planning: $700 - $17,000
Full Planning: $1300 - $20,000+
I hope that with this information and knowledge that you now feel better about planning the wedding that you want and be able to keep your wedding within the budget that you have planned for. There are a lot of things in planning that a professional wedding planner can assist you with and guide you on to find the best vendor for your event, but you can also use this to plan your wedding on your own if that’s what you want and can do. At the end of it all, it’s all about celebrating your love story and creating memories that you will hopefully cherish in your new marriage.
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