How Much Do Wedding Celebrants Charge?
Let’s face it weddings are notoriously expensive in its entirety but there’s always a way to make it work for you and your budget.
Quality vs Budget
Ultimately it depends on what’s important to you. If you'd after high quality, excellent service and the right amount of effort from your wedding celebrant, then here's a little info about the right price to pay.
When it comes to working out how much you should spend on a celebrant, it’s worth understanding what our role entails, what we’re responsible for and how many hours it takes to work on your wedding. There’s plenty of preparation, planning, overheads, setting up and checking everything, in the lead up and on the day. In Australia, celebrant also take care of the entire legal process, unlike any other country.
“Party Starter” Role & Wedding Tiers
We also have the intangible role as ‘the party starter’ fundmentally setting the tone for entire day’s celebration. And whatever you do, you don’t want to get this part wrong just to save a couple of hundred bucks.
It’s best to understand that the different pricing depends on a celebrant’s experience, location, their availability, as well as their quality of work, time and effort getting to know you and personalising your ceremony. Also, it’s mportant to know what tier of weddings they cater to - whether it’s affordable, mid-tier or luxury. Based on all of these factors, it is also useful to work out the pricing as if it were per hour instead of an overall figure.
Generally speaking, I put in around 10-15 hours of work for every couple. So if you divide celebrant fees per hour, it looks a little like $75-120 per hour. Every celebrant decides what they charge so don’t be surprised if you find a big variation in quotes. If it looks cheap, be wary and expect no frills, similar to a registry wedding. Any celebrant charging this, is most likely putting very little effort into making your ceremony meaningful.
On average, a good to fantastic celebrant will charge anywhere between $1,000-$2,000 (and sometimes more) for a full wedding package. For elopements and small weddings, the fees could be slightly less. Also note, these figures excluder travel expenses if your celebrant lives outside of your wedding location.
If you are quoted $900-$1,100 as a base, you should expect a good quality celebrant who is perhaps still starting out. For anything over $1,500, you are typically looking at celebrants who are experienced and popular.
Your Most Important Vendor
Lastly, a key thing to keep in mind is that your celebrant is one of (if not) your most important wedding vendor. Given the fact that a wedding is not a wedding without a celebrant, it’s just a party. Celebrants have the huge responsibility of legalising your marriage. Behind all the legal paperwork, lies some serious work for celebrants to fulfil their legal obligations set by the Australian government. An area that doesn’t get much recognition.
A guide on what’s involved in planning your ceremony
breaking down the hours:
2.5 hrs – get to know each other and what's important to you through meetings, calls and emails
2.5 hrs – prepare your legal paperwork and register your marriage
3 hrs – writing your personalised ceremony, assistance with vows and other ceremony elements
3 hr – prepare paperwork, test equipment, get ready and practice your ceremony
1 hr – rehearsal
2-3 hrs – on your wedding day: set up, meet and greet key people and delivery of ceremony.
PLUS…
Travel – travel time, petrol, flights, accommodation and meals
Overheads – compulsory training, celebrant licence, equipment, attire, stationary, marketing, office set up.
That’s 15 hours, not including travel time.
At the end of the day, celebrants are certainly not out to overcharge anyone. We love what we do! We also need to ensure our small businesses are sustainable. It literally takes lots of preparation, checking finer details, providing ideas, guidance, legal advice and emotional support, not to mention the travel and the weekend work making every single couple’s ceremony a wonderful experience, that’s unique to them.
Cheers to that!