We are the event planners in Davie, FL couples call when they want to understand how planning is priced before they lock a date. South Florida weddings do not have one number. The room, the guest count, the date, and how much staffing the night actually needs all move the engagement. What follows is how planners structure fees — not a menu.
How wedding planners structure fees
Most full-service planners charge in one of two ways. A flat fee is set against a defined scope: how many months of work, how many vendors we manage, whether we are on the floor through load-out, whether we are at the rehearsal. When the scope grows — a second location, a welcome night, a guest count that doubles the staffing — the flat fee is rewritten, not padded in silence. The other common structure is a percentage of total wedding spend. That number moves with catering, florals, lighting, and the room itself. It is not a mystery multiplier. It is a way to keep the planner’s time tied to the size of the night.
Coordination is usually a smaller, fixed engagement. You already have the venue, the caterer, and the florist. You are buying the last month and the day, not the year of design. That is why coordination sits below full planning on cost, and why it is the wrong hire if the room is not booked. If you want what full planning covers from the first tour, that is a different scope from last-month floor management when vendors are set.
What actually moves the number
Date. A Saturday in January in this corridor is not a Friday in August. Hotel ballrooms and estate lawns fill on the same winter weekends. When the room is scarce, labor is scarce, and the planner’s calendar is scarce. We say so before anyone prints an invite.
Guest count. Twenty-five people in a garden room is a different staffing plan from one hundred eighty in a Stirling Road ballroom. More guests means more vendor handoffs, more timeline pressure, more people on the floor. The fee follows the work, not a per-head parlor trick.
The room. A ranch gate in western Davie, a park building with a hard close, a hotel dock that only takes trucks in a window, a gated estate with an HOA packet — those are different nights. Load-in time is planner time. Rain plans are planner time. A generator on a residential lot is planner time.
Staffing is the last driver. One producer on a small dinner is not a team covering ceremony, cocktail hour, and a ballroom dinner a mile apart. A ranch ceremony at 5 p.m. and a Stirling Road dinner at 7 p.m. means two load-ins, two parking plans, and a guest shuttle nobody thought about until the walkthrough. That work is in the fee because it is in the night.
What is not in a planning fee: the catering minimum, the hotel banquet order, the florist, the band. Those are vendor contracts. A planner who pretends the fee buys the whole wedding is selling fog. A planner who will not say whether overtime on the floor is included is selling fog of a different kind. Ask what happens if the dock runs long. Ask who is still there when the park gate closes.
What you are paying for
You are paying for one person who owns the clock. Venue tours, vendor timing, the cue sheet, the floor. You are not paying for a stack of rentals. When décor, lighting, or a photo booth is part of the night, we pull from inventory we already control so quality and timing stay together. That is not a catalog. Hosts who want a seated dinner produced as one booking are buying that same standard: design and execution in one conversation.
You are also paying for the hours you do not see. Confirming a dock. Rewriting a cue sheet when the florist runs late. Staying until the truck is gone so a park gate or a hotel banquets captain is not calling you at midnight. If a planner will not tell you what is in scope, the fee is not the problem. The scope is.
How to talk about budget without a price list
Call with the date, the guest count, and the room or neighborhood. We will tell you whether the night fits a coordination engagement or full planning, and how we would structure the fee against that scope. We will not invent a package on the phone. We will not quote a number that pretends every Davie lawn is a ballroom. If you are ready to reach us with date and guest count, have those three things even if the venue is not locked.
Bring honesty about spend. A percentage engagement needs a real sense of catering and room. A flat fee needs a real sense of how many moving parts you want us to hold. Coordination needs a vendor list, not a blank slate. We will tell you if we can take the date. Saturday dates in this corridor go first; weekday evenings are a different staffing picture and a different fee conversation. Ask which Saturday or weekday you actually have booked. Tell us the date plainly.Call (754) 484-9277 — call-only, no SMS. The form goes to the same desk the next business morning.
Call (754) 484-9277. CALL NOW