Last updated 15 October 2026
Be the wedding planner a couple finds before they book the venue.
Bridebook lists wedding planners from £20 a month plus VAT. Hitched sells paid tiers on an annual contract and won't print the price. Bark and Add to Event sell credits you spend to quote a couple, and Zapo runs ads for event planners from £400 a month plus VAT. Poptop, which takes a cut of photographers' and caterers' bookings, has no planner category at all. Buy the click yourself and a couple searching "wedding planner near me" costs £3.07; a company searching "event management company" costs £20.32.
Couples spend £1,543 on a planner on average, by Bridebook's count. What decides whether a lead pays is when it reaches you: a full-planning couple hires early, before the venue, and a lead that arrives after they've booked it is worth far less. Supplying the day instead? See catering leads and wedding photographer leads.
From Bridebook's 2026 report
Average engagement: 23.8 months. Venue booked within four weeks of first contact: 79% of couples.
That is from Bridebook's 2026 wedding report, built on 7,000 couples. A couple has close to two years between the ring and the wedding, then settles the biggest booking of all in under a month once they start. A planner who isn't found before that month is planning around somebody else's choice.
Where we stand
We don't sell wedding planning leads. We help you get your own.
This guide is the honest version of what buying wedding planning leads costs, and who else gets them. What we do instead is build wedding and event planners a website that turns visits into calls, and run Google Ads in an account in your own name, so every lead that comes in is a customer who found you, and nobody else was sold it.
What a booking is worth
On the day, partial or full: the same lead is a different share of each fee.
Bark puts on-the-day coordination at £500 to £1,500, partial planning at £1,000 to £3,000 and full planning at £2,000 to £10,000 as a flat fee, or 10 to 15 percent of the wedding budget. Bridebook quotes the same 10 to 15 percent and puts what couples actually spend on a planner at £1,543, against an average wedding of £20,604. Bark's event planners average £400, with its nationwide bands running £250 to £2,000.
Here is what a booking costs two ways: a lead from your own ad on "wedding planner near me" at about £42, if you book one couple in 3, and a year of Bridebook's cheapest plan set against one booking.
| Booking | Typical UK price | Your own ads, about £42 a lead | Bridebook Basic, £240 a year |
|---|---|---|---|
| On-the-day coordination | £500 to £1,500 | £126 a booking, 13% of it | 24% of one booking |
| A party or event planner | £250 to £2,000 | £126 a booking, 11% of it | 21% of one booking |
| What couples spend on a planner, on average | £1,543 | £126 a booking, 8% of it | 16% of one booking |
| Partial wedding planning | £1,000 to £3,000 | £126 a booking, 6% of it | 12% of one booking |
| Full wedding planning, flat fee | £2,000 to £10,000 | £126 a booking, 2% of it | 4% of one booking |
Service prices are from Bark's wedding planner and event planner pages; the average is from Bridebook's planner cost guide (July 2026). Ranges are worked at their middle. One win in 3 is MyJobQuote's figure for its trades; nobody publishes one for planners. Bridebook's plan is plus VAT. The ads column uses WordStream's conversion rate for home improvement search ads, explained further down.
On our rough rule, winning a job should cost about 10 to 15 percent of what it pays. A lead from your own ads comes in at 8% of an average booking and 2% of full planning. On-the-day coordination is where it gets tight: at 13% of a £1,000 job it sits near the top of the band, and a London click or a lower win rate tips it over.
A percentage fee grows with the budget
Charge 10 to 15 percent and a couple spending the average £20,604 is worth far more to you than one spending half that, for the same lead price. Your ads can pick which couples they show to; a directory listing shows to everyone who browses.
A subscription is paid whether you book
Bridebook's Basic plan is £240 a year plus VAT, about 16% of one average booking. Its Classic plan billed yearly is £1,033.50 plus VAT, about 67% of one. Bridebook's terms say it does not promise any minimum number of leads.
Your numbers
How much can one planning lead cost before the booking stops paying you?
It opens on Bridebook's average spend. Swap in the service you sell most, say how many couples you sign out of every few you meet, and enter what a platform charges to reach each one. Try on-the-day coordination next, then full planning, and watch the same lead price go from painful to small.
WHAT CAN YOU PAY FOR A WEDDING PLANNER LEAD?
Pick a job, or type in what yours are worth
Starts on one in three, the figure MyJobQuote tells its own trades to expect. Put in yours.
You can pay up to about
£77
a lead, winning one in 3
- Healthy range, per won job
- £154 to £231
- Which per lead is
- £51 to £77
Put a seller's price in the last box and this will tell you what each won job would cost you.
That 10 to 15 percent band is a rule of thumb we apply to every kind of business, and nobody has measured it for planners.
When the work arrives
A full-planning lead turns up two summers before the wedding it pays for.
Bridebook's planner cost guide tells couples the best time to hire a full planner is right at the start, before they've made any other bookings, and that partial planning is booked with three or four months to go. Its report puts the average engagement at 23.8 months, and December is the most popular month to get engaged. August holds 17% of weddings, the busiest month of the year.
So a full-planning couple who finds you in January may not be married until the summer after next, and the fee lands across that stretch. Directory renewals and ad budgets run month to month or year to year, which means you are paying for this year's leads out of the weddings you booked two years ago. Partial planning and on-the-day work turn round in months.
UK searches for "wedding planner near me", by month
October 2025 to September 2026. Google Ads keyword data, rounded bands.
Hitched and Bridebook don't say when couples start looking for a planner, so these figures are our own pull of Google search data. UK searches for "wedding planner near me" were lowest in December at 480 and highest in January at 880, about 1.8 times apart. The jump from December to January is the same across the planning searches:
| Search | December 2025 | January 2026 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| wedding planner near me | 480 | 880 | 1.8 times |
| wedding planner uk | 480 | 1,000 | 2.1 times |
| destination wedding planner | 110 | 390 | 3.5 times |
| event planner | 2,400 | 3,600 | 1.5 times |
| corporate event planner | 260 | 320 | 1.2 times |
Destination planning moved most, 3.5 times in a month, while company searches for a corporate planner barely moved. If you plan both, the corporate side is the steadier half of the year.
Who sends you couples
Two directories, two quote marketplaces and one ad seller. That is the whole market.
Planners have fewer places to buy leads than photographers or caterers do. Each price and quote below is from the firm's own website, and "Not stated" means the firm doesn't say.
| Platform | Price | Who else sees the couple | In their words |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hitched | Free listing; paid tiers unpriced, yearly | 1,082 planner listings | "renew automatically for successive periods of 12 months" |
| Bridebook | £20 or £99 a month + VAT | 740 planners, toastmasters and celebrants | "Exclusively featured on venue profile of your choice" |
| Bark | Credits at £1.80, priced per lead | Up to 5 professionals | "Each customer can receive up to 5 responses" |
| Add to Event | Credits from £55 for 50 + VAT | No cap; 30+ planners ready to quote | "100% free - no commission" |
| Zapo | From £400 a month + VAT | Nobody | "get event planning leads" |
Hitched: a year at a time, with a list that includes Rome
Hitched shows 1,082 wedding planner listings, and the first one when we looked was a planning company based in Rome, so a UK couple browsing is weighing you against overseas destination planners too. The paid tiers buy a starting position in search and couples' phone numbers, with no price on the page. The terms of purchase make it an annual charge you can't end in the first 12 months, renewing for another 12 unless you give 28 days' written notice, and the fees are non-refundable. Its terms of use also stop you passing a couple on to someone who isn't on Hitched, which matters to a planner whose whole job is recommending suppliers.
Bridebook sells planners a place on a venue's profile
Bridebook's planner pricing is the same as its photographers': SupplierPro Basic at £20 a month plus VAT, which reveals couples' phone numbers, and Classic at £99, which adds priority placement and being "Exclusively featured on venue profile of your choice". For a planner, that last line is the interesting one: it puts you in front of couples at the point they are choosing a venue, which is the moment the lead is worth most. Its search shows 740 planners, toastmasters and celebrants as one category. Planners and other suppliers look for it, too: "bridebook business" gets 880 searches a month, against 140 for "hitched for business".
Bark and Add to Event charge you to send the quote
Bark's wedding planners page puts the average job at £1,000, and its event planners page at £400. It sells credits at £1.80 each that last 3 months, prices each lead by the service, the job and the area, and lets up to 5 professionals respond to one customer. It offers to return your credits if your first pack wins you nothing. Add to Event says it has 30+ wedding planners ready to quote, takes no commission, keeps a request open for 7 days and sets no cap on quotes. Neither publishes what a planning lead costs in credits. Bark's credit system across all its categories is covered in is Bark worth it.
Zapo and the agencies sell you the ads
Zapo has an event planners page offering to "get event planning leads" from search ads it runs. The cheapest plan is £400 a month plus VAT with £200 set aside for ads, and Zapo estimates 10 leads from it. It has no wedding planner page. Pearl Lemon Leads, an agency selling lead generation to wedding planners, starts its packages at £1,497 a month. Both are buying clicks in the same Google auction you can enter yourself.
Who doesn't sell planner leads at all
Poptop takes 12 percent of photographers' and caterers' bookings and has no planner category. Togather lists caterers, bars, photographers and venues, and no planners. Checkatrade, Rated People, MyBuilder, MyJobQuote and TrustATrader have no planner category either, and Google's UK Local Services Ads list doesn't include event or wedding planners.
Everything here about Hitched's contract comes from its own published terms and conditions, last read on 15 October 2026. Terms get revised, so check yours against the current version before you act on anything.
Rather have wedding planning leads that are yours alone?
That's what we do. We don't sell leads. We build the website and run the Google Ads that bring customers straight to you, in an ad account in your name that stays yours if you ever leave.
See pricingWant to know how many people near you search Google for what you do each month? Message us your town and we'll send you the real numbers.
Check my areaBuying the click yourself
A company looking for an event manager costs 6.6 times a couple near you.
"event management company" costs £20.32 a click and "corporate event planner" £11.60. "wedding planner near me" is £3.07 and "wedding planner london" £3.70. Nobody searches to buy planning leads: "how to get wedding planning clients" gets about 10 searches a month and "event management marketing" 20. To turn clicks into leads we divide by 7.33%, WordStream's conversion rate for home improvement search ads. It comes from American campaigns in a different market, so use the last column for comparing rows, not for budgeting.
| Search | Searches a month | Per click | Per lead |
|---|---|---|---|
| corporate event management | 170 | £20.51 | £280 |
| event management company | 880 | £20.32 | £277 |
| corporate event planner | 320 | £11.60 | £158 |
| event planner london | 260 | £9.29 | £127 |
| party planner london | 210 | £8.41 | £115 |
| destination wedding planner | 210 | £5.27 | £72 |
| event planner | 2,400 | £5.21 | £71 |
| event planner near me | 880 | £5.19 | £71 |
| wedding planner london | 720 | £3.70 | £50 |
| on the day wedding coordinator | 140 | £3.26 | £44 |
| wedding planner near me | 590 | £3.07 | £42 |
| wedding planner uk | 590 | £3.01 | £41 |
| party planner | 880 | £2.72 | £37 |
| luxury wedding planner | 260 | £2.69 | £37 |
| wedding planner edinburgh | 110 | £2.63 | £36 |
| indian wedding planner | 90 | £2.47 | £34 |
| wedding coordinator | 1,000 | £2.28 | £31 |
| wedding planner cost | 320 | £2.17 | £30 |
| wedding planner manchester | 110 | £2.14 | £29 |
| wedding planner scotland | 170 | £2.09 | £29 |
Google Ads data for the UK, pulled 15 October 2026. Click prices are bid-based estimates, so what you actually pay will sit around them. Google reports grouped wordings as one figure, so the table carries each group once.
The plain search is the trap. "wedding planner" gets 12,100 searches a month at £1.19, cheaper than any row above, because Google counts "wedding organiser" in the same figure and "wedding planner book" alone gets 5,400. A good share of those people want a notebook. The town and service searches are where couples are hiring.
A lead from a London search works out at about £50, or £151 a booked couple at one in 3: 10% of an average booking and 8% of partial planning. A corporate lead at about £277 is £832 a won client at the same rate, so on our rough rule it needs event work worth about £5,500 or more. "on the day wedding coordinator" costs £3.26 a click, which is a lot against a £1,000 job.
Across the table, a lead from your own ads costs £29 to £280. What that buys over a directory:
- Your ad, so nobody is listed beside you
- Bids on the venues and towns you work
- Couples who search a style, like destination
- Your fees on your website before they ask
- Clicks paid to Google, with nothing added
- An ad account that leaves with you
Our Google Ads guide explains search ads for a small business, from match types to the account you're signing up to, and how much to spend on Google Ads helps set the monthly figure.
Venue lists and commission
Suppliers pay venues to be recommended. Your commission needs the couple to know too.
The lead source every planner knows is a venue's recommended supplier list, and it often isn't free. The UK Wedding Association says suppliers often pay a fee or a percentage of the booking to appear on one, and that the commission a planner takes from a supplier or venue is typically 10%. On Bridebook's average booking, 10% is £154.
Planners sit on both sides of it. Bridebook tells couples their planner "may receive a small amount of commission" when they book a venue or supplier. The UK Wedding Association calls that an ethical model if the couple knows and is comfortable with it. The Supreme Court, in a 2025 motor finance case, described a secret commission as a payment to an agent made without the other party's knowledge and consent. Disclosure is what separates the two.
Get the venue's terms in writing
Before you join a list, ask what it costs, whether it is a fee or a share of each booking, and how many other planners are on it. A list of one is a referral; a list of ten is a directory.
Say it in the booking contract
If you take commission, say so before the first recommendation, and say whether it changes your fee. Then it is a term the couple agreed to, not something they find out.
Know who pays for the cut
The UK Wedding Association points out that a supplier who adds the commission to the couple's invoice has the couple paying it in a roundabout way. Ask your suppliers which they do.
Fairs, awards and associations
A wedding fair stand costs pence per couple through the door. The work is getting them to stop.
A fair puts you in front of engaged couples before they've booked much, which is the moment a planner wants. Here is what organisers publish for a stand, and the couples they say come:
| Fair | Stand | Couples, in the organiser's words |
|---|---|---|
| Bryanston School wedding fair | 6ft table £70 + VAT | Not stated |
| Salisbury Guildhall wedding fair | £100 + VAT a date | Over 150 couples at past fairs |
| The Big Southwest Wedding Fair | From £120 + VAT for the weekend | 600 to 700+ engaged couples |
| Hampshire Wedding EXPO | £275 to £495 + VAT | Not stated |
| The National Wedding Show | Quote only | Over 40,000 visitors a year |
Read on each organiser's own page, for example The Big Southwest Wedding Fair and Salisbury's Guildhall fair.
Fairs suit planners because the couples there are early, and a stand only pays if you leave with names you can follow up.
Associations sell credibility rather than leads. The UK Wedding Association is £300 a year for a badge, a listing and introductions; its benefits page doesn't say it passes on leads. The Wedding Industry Awards charges £122 (£102 plus VAT) an entry and gives entrants a free directory listing. The UK Alliance of Wedding Planners' old website now redirects to an unrelated site, so check any badge you're offered still belongs to a working body.
Destination planners
Put the flights and the rooms together and you may be selling a package.
"destination wedding planner" costs £5.27 a click, and the couples behind it often want the travel sorted too. Under the Package Travel Regulations 2018, a package is at least two different types of travel service for the same trip, combined by one trader or sold at a total price. Travel services are carrying passengers, accommodation, car hire and other tourist services. A tourist service only counts towards a package if it is a significant part of the value or advertised as essential, and the government's guidance gives 25% of the value as the rule of thumb.
The organiser of a package must have insolvency protection to refund travellers, and to bring them home if transport is included, and failing to is an offence. Flight packages need an ATOL; packages without flights can be covered by a bond, insurance or a trust account.
- Flights plus rooms for the couple: a package
- Rooms plus a tourist extra worth 25%+: check it
- Under 24 hours with no overnight stay: outside it
- Calling yourself an intermediary: no way out
An amendment in force from 6 April 2027 adds a new kind of package where one trader lets the traveller pick and pay for each travel service separately in one visit, and says a declaration that you are acting only as an intermediary doesn't get you out of the duties. If your destination offer includes the travel, take advice on how it's sold before you advertise it.
Which way to go
Use the venue and the directories for reach. Catch the couples searching your area for yourself.
A directory listing if
- One booking covers the year
- You want venue-side visibility
- You reply to a request fast
- The renewal is in your diary
Think twice if
- Up to 5 others quote the couple
- The price is only on a call
- You mostly sell on-the-day work
- You can't recommend outside it
Run your own ads if
- You plan in one area or style
- Your fees are on your site
- You take corporate work too
- The ad account is yours to take
Before you sign anything, ask what a year costs in writing, when it renews, whether you get couples' phone numbers, and how many other planners see each request. Then put the renewal date in your diary. What sharing a couple does to your quote is in the shared-lead trap, and reviews from couples you've planned for do more on every route, which how to get more Google reviews covers. How other businesses buy their leads is in our guide to trade leads.
Our sources
Where every wedding planning figure here came from.
For the record, we build websites and run Google Ads, so we have a stake in which route you pick. That is why each platform is quoted in its own words, and why the tables show a year of Bridebook's cheapest plan beside our own ads.
Seller pages and terms were read on each firm's own site on 15 October 2026, and the UK search and click data was pulled from Google Ads on 15 October 2026. Prices come from Bark and Bridebook's planner cost guide; Bark's own price guide gives a higher average of £1,500, so its two pages disagree. Engagement and venue timing are from Bridebook's 2026 report. Commission is from the UK Wedding Association, package travel from legislation.gov.uk and the CAA, cancellation from the CMA, and Local Services Ads from Google's help pages. Guides for Brides blocked every attempt to read it, so it is left out. No UK survey says what share of couples hire a planner, so this page doesn't give one.
Questions wedding planners ask
Wedding planner leads, answered.
- How much do wedding planner leads cost in the UK?
- Bridebook lists planners from £20 a month plus VAT, or £99 for priority placement. Hitched prints no price for its paid tiers. Bark charges credits at £1.80 each, with the number per lead set by the job and the area, and Add to Event sells credits from £55 for 50 plus VAT. Zapo runs ads for event planners from £400 a month plus VAT. A click on your own ad costs £2.09 to £20.51.
- How many planners see the same couple's request?
- On Bark, up to 5 professionals can respond to one customer, and you can see how many already have before you pay. Add to Event sets no cap and says it has 30+ wedding planners ready to quote. Hitched shows 1,082 wedding planner listings, and Bridebook 740 planners, toastmasters and celebrants together. Neither says how many planners one couple contacts.
- How far ahead do couples hire a wedding planner?
- For full planning, Bridebook advises hiring one right at the start, before any other bookings, and its 2026 report puts the average engagement at 23.8 months. Partial planning is usually booked three or four months before the day. The same report found 79% of couples booked their venue within four weeks of first contact, so a full-planning couple has to find you before they start ringing venues.
- Do wedding planners take commission from venues and suppliers?
- Some do. Bridebook tells couples a planner may receive a small commission when they book a venue or supplier, and the UK Wedding Association says that commission is typically 10%. It also says it can be an ethical model if the couple knows about it. Put it in writing in your contract before the first recommendation.
- Does a destination wedding planner need ATOL?
- If you put flights together with accommodation or another travel service for the same trip, you are likely to be organising a package under the Package Travel Regulations 2018, and the government's guidance says flight packages need ATOL protection. Packages without flights need insolvency cover through a bond, insurance or a trust account. From 6 April 2027, calling yourself an intermediary does not remove those duties.
- Can a couple cancel a wedding planning contract?
- A service sold online or away from your premises usually carries a 14-day cancellation right, with an exemption for leisure services booked for a specific date that government guidance illustrates with wedding venues. No official source names planners, so give the cancellation information anyway. The CMA has said that anything a wedding business keeps on cancellation must reflect what it actually loses and must not be excessive.
- Can wedding planners use Google Local Services Ads?
- Not in the UK. Google's UK list of Local Services Ads categories is home services plus lawyers and estate agents in Greater London, and event and wedding planners aren't on it. Ordinary search ads are open to you.
- Do Checkatrade or Poptop send wedding planner leads?
- No. Checkatrade, Rated People, MyBuilder, MyJobQuote and TrustATrader have no planner category, and Poptop and Togather, which take bookings for caterers and photographers, have none either.
Keep reading
More straight answers for trades.
Your next two seasons, booked by couples who found you before the venue.
We build your website and run Google Ads from an account in your own name, aimed at the couples and companies searching your area rather than a directory where they browse a thousand other planners. See what it costs, then tell us about your business and we'll build the campaign around the weddings and events you want to plan.