How to Stop Undercharging as a Celebrant

Let me describe someone I have coached more than once.

They came into celebrancy from a career in teaching, or nursing, or social work. They trained because they wanted to do meaningful work, to be genuinely useful to people at the moments that mattered most. They love the work deeply. They are very good at it. Their clients say so. Their reviews say so. The families who book them say they couldn’t imagine anyone else doing their ceremony.

And they are charging less than they should. Sometimes significantly less.

When I ask them about their pricing, something interesting happens. They become uncomfortable. They talk about not wanting to price people out, about not feeling they can justify asking for more, about other celebrants in their area who charge less. Sometimes they say – very quietly – that it feels wrong to make good money from something so personal. Like charging too much for the ceremony would cheapen it.

If any of this sounds familiar, I want to talk to you about celebrant pricing. Not just the numbers, but the thinking underneath them.

Why celebrants from caring professions undercharge

Most people who come into celebrancy from nursing, teaching, social work, therapy, and similar backgrounds share something important: they were trained, professionally and culturally, to put the needs of others before their own, and to regard financial reward as somewhat beside the point of the work.

This is a genuinely beautiful quality in a celebrant. It’s part of what makes you so good at what you do.

But it becomes a problem when it bleeds into your pricing. Because the belief that charging well is somehow incompatible with doing meaningful work is a false belief. And it costs you, not just financially, but in terms of the sustainability and longevity of your career.

A celebrant who is undercharging is often also overworking, because they need more ceremonies to make the income they need. They’re tired. They don’t have time for the training and CPD that keeps their work excellent. They can’t invest in their website or their professional development. And gradually, the work that was supposed to be fulfilling starts to feel like a grind.

Sustainable celebrant pricing isn’t about greed. It’s about being able to keep doing this work, really well, for the long term.

What you’re actually charging for

Let me reframe something. When couples or families pay your fee, they are not paying for 60 minutes on a day. They are paying for everything that has gone into that 60 minutes.

The training you undertook. The hours spent learning your craft. The consultation where you sat with a grieving family and asked all the right questions with patience and care. The evening you spent writing and rewriting the tribute until it felt exactly right. The rehearsal walk-through. The professional membership. The insurance. The fuel to get there. The time you spent being present and responsive throughout the planning process.

They are paying for the certainty that when something unexpected happens on the day (a piece of music that doesn’t play, a guest who needs a moment, a microphone that cuts out), there is someone at the front of that room who knows exactly what to do and does it without anyone else even noticing anything went wrong.

That is not worth the same as a local authority registrar who may never have met the couple before, is working from a standard script, and has two other ceremonies to get to that afternoon. And yet many celebrants price themselves as though it were.

The practical side of celebrant pricing

Here is a rough framework. Take your minimum viable annual income – what you actually need to live, cover your business costs, invest in your development, and have some margin.

Divide it by the maximum number of ceremonies you can sustainably do in a year without burning out. That number, adjusted for your experience, your area, and your market, is somewhere near where your fee should be.

At the time of writing, for wedding celebrants in the UK, fees currently range from around £600 for newer celebrants to £1,800 and above for experienced ones with strong reputations. In London and other major cities, higher fees are standard. For funeral celebrants, the market is more complex because of funeral director relationships. It’s worth knowing that when families book you directly, you are entirely free to price your work appropriately.

The question I always encourage celebrants to sit with is: if a client said yes immediately, without hesitation, to your current fee – does that tell you anything?

Raising your prices

If you’ve been undercharging and you want to change it, here’s what I’d suggest.

Raise your prices with existing enquiries from the date you decide, not from some future moment when you feel ready. Because that moment often doesn’t come without a decision.

You don’t need to announce it or justify it. You simply update your website, your information, and your responses to enquiries. If returning clients ask, you can say warmly that your fees have changed to reflect your experience and the level of service you provide.

The clients who are right for you will still book you. The clients who fall away at a higher price were usually not the right fit anyway.

A final thought

There is nothing noble about undercharging. It doesn’t make your ceremonies more meaningful. It doesn’t make your service more valuable. It doesn’t serve your clients better.

What it does is make your career harder to sustain, and it subtly communicates – to yourself and to the market – that your work is worth less than it is.

You came into this work because you believed in it. Charge accordingly.

If pricing, business confidence, and building a sustainable celebrant career are things you’d like to work on, I offer one-to-one coaching for celebrants at all stages. I’d love to help you build something that lasts.

And if you’re considering celebrancy as a career and want to understand the business reality from the start, book an Informed Decision Session.

Warmly, Dinah
She/Her