A short YouTube monologue (May 23, 2025) by Marissa Brennan critiquing common pricing and profit practices in the bridal/wedding industry. The speaker argues against automatically adding 20–25% gratuity, outsourcing to large teams without proper pricing, and charging per-mile travel fees because these practices mask improper charging for time and can force tips on brides. Practical recommendations: charge assistant fees, price time correctly (prefer charging per half-hour rather than per mile), and generally "price yourself to profit."
Things in our industry that I just totally disagree with. Tell me, have you heard? You should be adding 20 to 25% gratuity onto every single one of your clients invoices to make more profit. You should be hiring out a team to work the weddings that you're unavailable for because you don't want to leave money on the table to make more profit in your bridal business, you should be skipping out on adding additional fees so you can book more to make more profit. Charge per mile for your travel fee so it looks less and that way you book more. Here's what all of those have in common. You're not charging properly for your time, so adding 20 to 25% gratuity on all of your invoices looks like you're adding more profit. What it's actually doing is forcing tips on your bride. So you're working for tips and now you have a team of 10 plus that you're managing and you're only making about 20% profit every single time they do a wedding. You're like, I didn't sign up to be a manager. Charging assistant fees adds more profit. When you work with assistance. Instead of charging per mile where you're not going to be profiting, charge per half hour which charges properly for your time. It's time you price yourself to profit.
