Setting your prices for your bridal hair or makeup business is not a quick task.  That doesn’t mean it has to be overly complicated or stressful.  Once you put a little time and effort into establishing your base rates for your unique business, the rest just becomes tweaks as you gain more experience, education, or upgrade your experience for your brides.  

Your price list will constantly be evolving, so I don’t recommend printing them out.  The vast majority of brides will not be requesting your prices in person.  They will be contacting you online or over the phone, so you need a fast and efficient way to deliver your prices to them and answer their questions digitally.  Each bride that contacts you needs to be given a personalized quote with an expiration date to guarantee that you are never leaving money on the table.  If she contacts you six months later, and you’ve raised your rates since, make it clear she needs to pay the new rates- not the old ones!

The most important thing to remember when setting your prices is to remove emotion from it.  Save the emotion for the wedding day when you can be excited, happy, and working with your bride to give her the best experience possible.  Do not worry about her bank account.  She will either book with you or she will not.  You are not in charge of what she can or cannot afford.  You are a business with set rates, and you have expenses to pay for.  Your time and expertise are valuable and either she will respect that, or you will fill her date with another bride who does.

The biggest mistake I see when bridal artists set their prices is they aren’t taking into account the brides that are uniquely right for THEIR business.  I say all the time in my course-  the Kleinfeld’s bride is NOT the same as the David’s Bridal bride. Both companies make wedding dresses.  The quality of the materials is going to differ, yes, but at the end of the day they are both in the same business- making and selling wedding dresses. Yet, they are not competitors.  They do not market to the same brides, therefore they do not care what the other one charges.  It does not impact their pricing or marketing.  The bride who is willing to pay for a Kleinfled dress is not going to be in the same shopping mindset as the bride who spends her days browsing the racks at her local David’s Bridal and vice versa.

When it comes to doing wedding hair or makeup, the same principals apply.  They apply for every facet of weddings from the flowers to the catering to the photographers and back to you.  Knowing your ideal target market will make the process of booking brides infinitely easier for you because your marketing will weed out the brides that are not a good fit for you before they waste your time in your inbox.  Yes, there will always be those that slip through, but they will more than likely not bother to email you back and you can move on.  Don’t waste too much time trying to chase down inquiries that don’t have the decency to reply with a “thanks but no thanks”.  

Overcoming the Scarcity Mindset:  Keep in mind that there are enough brides to go around and then some.  Focus instead on creating the perfect service offering for your perfect bride at the perfect price so that when she finds you it becomes a no brainer for her to book you.  The more you let what your competition is doing effect you, the harder you make it for yourself to focus on YOUR brides.  They are out there.  Trust me.

Now if you’re enrolled in Next Level Bridal Business, you’ll already know that the entire process of building and scaling your business is based on the principal of the Dream Bride.  Your Dream Bride will already love you and be willing to pay whatever your rates are.  Getting your Dream Bride to contact you is all a matter of marketing, not pricing.

When it’s time to start setting your rates, you need to research your actual local Market.  This is where you’re going to spend your time looking at the prices ranges of all your competitors and even non-competitors.  I recommend researching at least 20 different companies to get the most accurate benchmarks. Yes, I know I preach that you shouldn’t worry about what your competitors are charging, but this is where that actually does matter.  

If your local market has artists charging only as high as $125 per bride and you want to charge $200, you’re definitely only going to be able to target luxury brides with high end budgets and need to understand that you will never be as busy as the cheaper artists.  But that’s completely ok.  It’s all about working smarter, not harder.  If you charge twice as much as your competition, you can book half as many weddings and still make the same amount as them with twice as much free time.

Set your priorities:  Do you want to be BUSY or do you want to be PROFITABLE?  Don’t fall into the trap that you have to be crazy booked out to be successful.  If your financial needs are met, you are still booking clients, and you have a balance between work life and home life, you’re pretty damn successful in my book!

Where exactly you set your prices within your market range rests solely on the factors that make you unique and will attract your brides.  You need to take into account your number of years of experience specializing in bridal hair or makeup.  I don’t care if you’ve been doing “hair” for 20 years.  If you haven’t spent the last 20 years specializing in bridal hair and bridal hair alone, you don’t get to count all 20 years.  

There are stylists fresh out of school who went straight into focusing on bridal hair that can do cartwheels around veteran stylists when it come to event hair because those veterans have been spent the majority of their careers doing cuts and colors. The amount of continuing education you do each year specifically for bridal hair or makeup is highly important.  If you haven’t updated the way you style hair in the last few years, you aren’t going to be able to keep up with current trends.  

As with everything in the beauty industry you either adapt or you perish.  Good enough is not good enough if you want to be charging anything more than bargain basement prices.  

In order to book brides efficiently, understanding how the modern bride books her wedding vendors is key.  Your first impression is going to make a bigger difference than almost anything else other than a personal referral from a friend.  Crafting a pricing brochure that showcases everything she is getting for her money is imperative. Make sure you lay everything out in advance so that you don’t look like you’re suddenly asking for more money after they’ve agreed to book you.  Ask all the questions you need up front in order to give them an accurate quote for their needs.  

If there are details they haven’t decided yet- such as start times, locations, headcounts, or extensions- that may effect their end cost, make sure they understand what factors could make the price go up and how much so they can make informed buying decisions.  Don’t be afraid that this will scare them off!  It is better that if they cannot afford these extras that they don’t book you- instead of being locked into a booking with you and then being pissed you are suddenly charging more than they expected to pay.  

Remember, your Dream Bride is already willing to pay whatever you’re charging.  If the bride you are talking to isn’t willing to pay, she’s not your Dream Bride.  Don’t waste time trying to make her into what she isn’t.  Focus your energy on attracting the right brides for your business, and you’ll make more money for less work.

Working weddings are emotionally rewarding, but they are also very draining of your time and energy.  If you are undercharging, you’ll be depleting yourself more than you’re making back.  Don’t forget the hours of work that goes into each wedding for emailing, phone consults, invoicing, contracting, cleaning and packing your kit, driving to the venue, setting up, breaking down, driving home… all those hours are free work if you’re only looking at your pricing from how long you spend doing the actual look for your client.  

As you can see, “doing good hair” is only a fraction of what it takes to set your prices effectively.  Your pricing will help to pre-qualify your ideal clients and weed out those who are going to waste your time.  Meaning you’re going to spend less time working and making more money for your time.  Not everyone should be booking with you.  If you’re overwhelmed with the number of weddings you book or overwhelmed with the amount of work you put into each wedding- that’s a clear sign you need to raise your rates!  

Doing wedding hair and makeup is a specialty and a skill reserved for the elite in our industry. Respect yourself as a professional and don’t treat this as just a side gig.  Even if it’s not something you do full time, please keep in mind that there are those of us who do.  And every time another artist doesn’t respect this part of the industry and undercuts our pricing or doesn’t respect the importance of a wedding and leaves a bride hanging, it hurts all of us.  We all then have to work even harder to repair that damage.

It’s like the kitchen beautician who does cheap work and undercuts the professionals in their town.  It’s easy to think “well, clients get what they pay for”, but that’s not fair to brides who have their once in a lifetime special day ruined by someone who doesn’t understand all the work that goes into doing weddings.  If you’re not committed to doing things right, please just don’t do them at all.  

Like this article and want more information on how to set your rates, how to target your Dream Bride, and how to craft the perfect pricing brochure to book brides faster? Get my Ultimate Pricing Guide For Bridal Artists today for just $27, and you'll have all that and more at your fingertips!