How To Get Paid For Extended Services Due To A Postponement

🐘 The elephant in the room... After navigating round after round of postponements during Covid, I’m sharing how the Chancey Charm team navigated them and got paid!

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Disclaimer: This video does not contain legal advice, and the counsel of a legal professional is highly recommended before putting content into action....

Transcript

Hi friends. I just wanted to hop on here really quick and talk about the elephant in the room, which is a second round of postponements for planners who had weddings that were booked before Covid or have booked fall weddings that are getting postponed now, or December weddings, or January weddings. Um, we are seeing an influx in postponements again, so I just wanted to talk about that because we have learned a lot in. How many months has it been now? Um, 6, 8, 9 months. I don't know how many months it's been that we've been dealing with postponements. It's been quite a while. And the first time we had like a round of postponements, we hopped on a team call and we just had the most amazing discussion and it really set the stage for our policies and procedures at Chancey Charm. So when the second wave hit and it felt, um, in some ways. Just like, okay, we need to have a reset. We need to talk again. And so I'm incredibly blessed that the team got on a call with me and we started processing and they are so smart and uh, just blew me away with what they suggested that we do as a team. So I wanted to share that here. Uh, the first point that was made is that one of the planners said, you know, I underestimated how much time it was gonna take for me to do these postponements. Um, in the beginning we were hesitant to charge for postponements with everything going on. Um, and our postponement fee is really small. We've actually increased it, um, on new contracts because our fee was so small it wasn't covering our time. And so as we go into a second, Um, with a low postponement fee, but some of these weddings being postponed for the second time, we are feeling caught between a rock and a hard place, right? Because we are very empathetic to these clients. We have some very heartbreaking situations that honestly, They make me wanna cry. Um, people having to postpone a second time, just heartbreaking for these couples. They're so sweet. We love our couples, so wanting to honor them and be empathetic to them, but also like the planner shared. This is taking a lot of time. And for us, time is money because as planners, your communicator, that's what you're doing. You're spending time on email and phone calls. You're organizing things, and so when you spend a lot of time doing a postponement, it takes away from your ability to book more clients because you're already overwhelmed with your current client. And we are very careful to try to only have one wedding a weekend per planner. We really try not to overbook ourselves so that we can provide quality service for our clients. So it's just become a real tension of like empathy, but also valuing ourselves as professionals, just like a lawyer or any other professional. Um, in terms of just, yeah, time is money, so, I really got on the call feeling like I was gonna support them in whatever they wanted to do because they're the ones client interfacing the most. And basically what we came up with, thanks to Elena, um, in Virginia, I'm gonna tag her in this video. She's amazing. Should follow her. She was like, okay. So basically we decided we had this postponement fee that covers your new date and it covers you. helping you get these vendors lined up for the new date. And let's basically take our postponement agreement and start writing things out in black and white, very simple. Um, so that there's no miscommunication, because kind of what's happened for a lot of our planners is that. They postponed, um, they did or didn't charge the postpone it fee. Like I said, we weren't. Now we are. Um, and so if we did, our hours were covered to work on, on all those new dates and all that. It's, it's a lot of work to get all the vendors on a new date on board. So that kind of covered that. And then we had the initial charge that we had for the services, let's say it's day of. And so we've sort of like spelling it out on our contract, like, here are the services that were already completed. You know, layout checks, contract checks, uh, a final walkthrough might have been completed. But here are the services that have not been completed. Rehearsal day of coordination. And so we're going through the list of services that they originally contracted for and we're saying, here are the things that have been done. Here are the things that have not been done. So your postponement fee's going to cover us, you know, moving all your vendors to the new date and saving a new date, which is our inventory basically. Skylar has really coined that, uh, term on our team, that our dates are our inventory, and then we're saying, Past that if you need more help, let's say you need your design redone because now you're gonna have a spring wedding, but you were having a fall wedding. Um, or just, you know, any of those kind of needs. Cause we had a lot of clients reaching out with more questions because they're postponing things. And so, and we were already really involved with them. Maybe we were two weeks from their wedding date. And so there was this. Gray area, um, for the last six plus months of like work that was being done, but it's not in their services and how do we navigate that? And so the system we came up with again is a postponement agreement, which we used engaged legals postponement agreement. It's amazing. And then we're spelling out here, here's the $500 postponement fee. We've actually raised that on our newer contracts cuz it's so much. And you're gonna pay this fee to get a new date. We're gonna help you move the vendors over there or help you find the new date. And then, um, here are the services that have been done. Here are the services that have not been done. So those are the services that we still owe you for the. Previously agreed upon original contract. Now, if any of these services need to be redone that have been done before, or if there are new services or things that you're sending us via email or asking for help on, we're gonna charge an hourly rate. For those services moving forward, and that will be billed at the end of the month. So it's functioning more like a lawyer would, um, function. When I email my lawyer, I fully expect him to bill me for that email and for his time. And so we're trying to better value the time that we're spending, the extra time that we're spend. With clients that postpone. So just wanted to hop on here and share that idea. It's not mine. It was my teams. They're amazing. And I just thought there are a lot of planners out there who are facing like postponements in the holidays and time is just going down the toilet. And how do we navigate that in a professional and respectful way with our clients where they don't feel like we're just all of a sudden sending them? Um, charging them more money without, like a reason or without work being done, you know, uh, upping that fee or just charging this huge amount up front, that feels unfair. But if they are asking for services and questions along the way and being charged, we just kind of felt like that was the right fit for this. Circumstance. It's not really something that we normally do, but I felt like, okay, this is gonna be a good way to value ourselves, protect our time, but also serve our clients when they need it. So hopefully this is inspiring to you. It's helpful, I hope and pray. Um, I am praying for you guys. I know there's so many sweet planners on the other side of this. Who are trying to navigate this. If you're navigating this alone, please go to the link, my bio sign up for my free launch guide, get access to my wedding planner Facebook group, ask questions. We're here to help each other. We're gonna get through this and we are definitely stronger together. I am always rooting for you.