How to find the best full service wedding planner for you: 5 Industry Secrets You Should Know

Choosing the best full service wedding planner for your wedding weekend is one of the most important decisions you’ll make. Your planner shapes your experience, protects your investment, and ensures your celebration meets (and exceeds) your expectations. They are, quite literally, the vendor you’ll interact with the most. When you’re trying to find the right planner, you’re essentially interviewing someone who will become part of your family for the next year (or more).

Here’s what most couples don’t realize: the wedding industry has nuances that aren’t obvious unless you’ve worked inside it. Experience, relationships, and behind-the-scenes insight give planners a perspective couples simply don’t have yet.

Below are five truths every couple deserves to know, along with essential questions to ask during consultations to ensure you’re choosing the best full service wedding planner for your unique needs.

1. High Volume Is a Red Flag

A planner who manages a high number of weddings each year may operate more like a production line than a hands-on partner. The best full service wedding planners do not rely on volume. They rely on thoughtful communication, customization, and meticulous attention to detail. In other words—they focus on being excellent at what they do, and they price themselves accordingly.

When interviewing planners, ask how many weddings they take per year and per month. If you’re considering a company with multiple planners, get specific about who your lead planner would be and how many clients they personally manage. Some planners may use high volume as evidence of experience, and while experience is important, volume also means more clients, more logistics, and more demands on their time.

Your goal is simple: make sure the planner you hire has the bandwidth, energy, and focus to give your wedding the attention it deserves.

Questions to ask to find the best full service wedding planner for you:

How many weddings do you take on annually?
Do you book multiple events in a single weekend?
How often will we communicate during the planning process?
Who will be my main point of contact?

2. Pricing Models Could Speak to Experience

Experienced planners often use a percentage-based pricing model because they understand how much time, nuance, and flexibility a wedding truly requires. A flat-fee proposal for a full-service experience may not always reflect the true scope of work—especially for larger or more complex weddings.

To be clear, flat-fee pricing for full-service planning is not “wrong.” I used that model earlier in my business and it worked for a while. But as my team began producing higher-investment events with more layers of logistics, I realized that a flat fee didn’t scale fairly or sustainably. It limited my ability to compensate my team appropriately and meet the expectations of clients whose weddings required significantly more support.

Shifting to a percentage-based model allowed me to align my fees with the level of detail, responsibility, and risk we were managing. It created a healthier structure for both my business and my clients, ensuring the resources matched the vision.

If a planner quotes a flat fee for full-service planning, I recommend asking a few clarifying questions. Understanding the why behind their pricing model will tell you a lot about their experience level, their process, and the level of support they can truly provide. I go deeper into this topic in a separate article you can read here.

In short, percentage-based pricing gives you and your planner room to scale with your event vision. It ensures the planning process is flexible, well-resourced, and supported at every stage—ultimately creating a better experience for everyone involved.

Questions to ask to find the best full service wedding planner for you:

How do you structure your pricing for full service?
What does your fee include—and what does it not include?
How do you ensure your pricing model provides the level of service we expect?
How do you adjust staffing or support for larger, more complex events?

3. Understand Online Listings

I know, I know—you’ve been scrolling wedding websites until your eyes feel like they’re bleeding. And after you finally find a vendor you want to learn more about, you see it: “Best of The Knot,” “Featured on Wedding Wire,” or “As Seen on Wed Society.”

Here’s the secret: these listings are paid advertisements. And the more a vendor pays, the higher they appear in your search. Fun, right?

Now, there is absolutely nothing wrong with paying to market your business. I’ve done it myself. It’s a normal part of running a business, and many planners find it helpful when they’re first getting established. But after a while, I realized I was spending money without receiving meaningful value in return. The badges didn’t bring in qualified clients, and they didn’t reflect the real quality or experience level of my services.

For couples planning in Raleigh and the surrounding region, there are wonderful local listing platforms that truly invest in the community. Heart of NC Weddings is a great example of a directory that thoughtfully curates its vendor list and supports couples throughout the planning process.

So here’s what I recommend: if you’re scrolling on The Knot or Wedding Wire and find a planner who feels like a strong fit, amazing. Use those platforms as a discovery tool—but then go directly to the vendor’s website to inquire. From there, follow your normal process to assess whether they are truly the best full service wedding planner for you. The listing may have introduced you, but the real vetting happens in conversation.

Questions to ask to find the best full service wedding planner for you:

What do your vendor partners say about working with you?
Can you share testimonials or real wedding case studies?
How do you collaborate with venues and vendors throughout the planning process?
Can you walk us through a wedding similar to ours that you’ve recently executed?

4. Price Shopping Will Leave You Disappointed

Okay, yes—we get it. Weddings are expensive. Call it what you want, but wedding vendors are not sitting around adding a “wedding tax” to their prices for fun. We price according to our expertise, the time we invest, the energy we pour into our clients, and the responsibility we carry on our shoulders. Sure, you may stumble upon a diamond in the rough or, unfortunately, an overpriced option. But this is exactly why you need to assess more than just price when you’re choosing the best full service wedding planner for you.

Say it with me: choosing the cheapest option in a creative service industry is a bad idea.

Your wedding is too important to hand over to the lowest bidder. You’re worth more than that. You deserve a planner who understands your vision, protects your investment, and elevates your experience—not just someone who fits a budget you found by Googling “how much does a wedding cost in Highlands, North Carolina” without considering your unique event, design preferences, or guest count.

The best full service wedding planners charge appropriately because they know exactly how much work goes into creating an extraordinary wedding. They understand what’s at stake, they deliver an exceptional product, and they deserve to be compensated for the expertise, leadership, and intention they bring to your event.

Questions to ask to find the best full service wedding planner for you:

How is your pricing informed by your experience and service level?
What investments do you make behind the scenes to ensure our wedding is successful?
How will your team support us on the wedding day?
What differentiates your service from planners with lower pricing?

5. Social Media Is a Tool, Not a Portfolio

If I could tell you the number of times I’ve had a couple fall in love with a venue because of their highly curated content, and then are sorely disappointed during their site visit. Stalk them online for as long as you want. But eventually, you gotta get on the phone and really see what’s up.

The pretty pictures you you see on Instagram, Pinterest, Tik Tok, and online portfolios are GREAT. However, this is the finished product. What you don’t see is how well the planner communicated with vendors ahead of the wedding day, how well the design aligned with the couple’s personal story and style, or how kind and collaborative the planner was throughout the entire process. Social media is literally giving you just one of many aspects to look at.

Again – what matters most is what you don’t see on social media. In fact, I would argue that how a planner creates the finished product is just (if not more) important as the wedding day itself. So be brave, you’re about to spend a lot of money, and you want to make the right decision. Ask to see design decks and production documents, ask about their approach to vendor communication, and the systems used to execute a wedding weekend. Get real evidence of the planner’s process.

Questions to ask during your consult:

Can we see sample design decks or production schedules?
How do you communicate design and logistics to vendors?
What does your planning process look like from start to finish?
Could you walk us through a real gallery from a wedding and you explain how it all came together?

Now you’re ready to find the BEST full service planner for you

Finding the best full service wedding planner for you isn’t rocket science. But you must be diligent in vetting your perfect fit. It’s about choosing someone who values your experience, communicates clearly, protects your investment, and has the expertise to anticipate every detail.

Before talking to planners, think through the questions we’ve highlighted and imagine how your ideal fit would answer. How much attention to deal do you want from your planner? What pricing structures are you most comfortable with? Do we require someone with experience in private estate weddings? Or tented weddings? Get specific.

When you ask the right questions, you quickly learn which planners will be able to get the job done and exceed your expectations. If you think SE could be that for you, drop us a line here.