Wedding Business Solutions

How do you handle leads for dates very far into the future?

• Alan Berg, CSP, Global Speaking Fellow

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How do you handle leads for dates very far into the future?

What do you do when a couple wants to book you for a date 15 months out—or even two years from now? How should you manage pricing, contract clauses, or even hold a tentative booking if they don’t have a venue yet? In this episode, I share practical strategies and key questions to ask when booking far in advance, ways to protect yourself against rising costs, and how to clearly communicate expectations (and policies) for cancellations and deposits with your clients.

Listen to this new 9-minute episode for insights on pricing, contracts, and conversations to help you confidently book clients—no matter how far out their event might be.

If you have any questions about anything in this, or any of my podcasts, or have a suggestion for a topic or guest, please reach out directly to me at Alan@WeddingBusinessSolutions.com or visit my website Podcast.AlanBerg.com 

Please be sure to subscribe to this podcast and leave a review (thanks, it really does make a difference). If you want to get notifications of new episodes and upcoming workshops and webinars, you can sign up at www.ConnectWithAlanBerg.com  

View the full transcript on Alan’s site: https://alanberg.com/blog/


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I'm Alan Berg. Thanks for listening. If you have any questions about this or if you'd like to suggest other topics for "The Wedding Business Solutions Podcast" please let me know. My email is Alan@WeddingBusinessSolutions.com. Look forward to seeing you on the next episode. Thanks.

Listen to this and all episodes on Apple Podcast, YouTube or your favorite app/site:

©2025 Wedding Business Solutions LLC & AlanBerg.com

How do you handle leads that are very far out into the future? Listen to this episode, see where we can do with it. Hey, it's Alan Berg. Welcome back to another episode of the Wedding Business Solutions podcast. This is another ask me anything suggestion. This one from an entertainment company here in the States who said, you know, how do you handle a lead that's 15 months out? And I didn't have any more information than that. So I'm just going to riff through a few different ideas with this. My initial thought is as an entertainment company, that's different than as a venue or a caterer, because, you know, it's not unusual for a venue to get an inquiry for 15 months out because people do need to get their venue before they can do a lot of the other things there. So I'm not sure what.

Where the question was coming from. Is it about pricing? Because that's one thing, you know, if it's about, you know, how should you price yourself 15 months out? Well, again, it depends upon what your service is, because for a venue or a caterer, you need to know what that pricing is more than a year out. Because the average wedding, depending upon where you are in the world, is being planned in the States anyway. It's still being planned a year or more away. So you would have to have that pricing in there. So that shouldn't be an issue. I do hear from venues sometimes it's two years out or even longer than that. You know, somebody's in university or somebody in the military or something and is planning for when there's some sort of a milestone or something that's going to happen that's going to say, yes, we can do this, but not for two more years until I get my degree or my master's or my PhD to hear whatever it is you're going for.

Right. So, you know, that's. That's something where the uncertainties of supply chain, the uncertainties, as I'm recording this, of tariffs and stuff like that, which are, you know, these are all uncertainties in pricing. This is where, you know, you have to have pricing a year out. Certainly I would think for any business you should be planning for next year, if it's longer than that, you know, historically look back and say, what kind of increase have we had? What kind of price fluctuations have we had in our cost of goods sold and our cost of delivering services? And, you know, can we just build that in and say, okay, I'm planning on a 10% increase. I'm planning on a 7% increase. 20% increase, whatever it is, if somebody wants to book me two years out, that's gonna be this much more, you know, how far off could you really be? Right. You know, and I suppose the parts of what you do could certainly go up again.

As I'm recording this, it's a. Tariffs have gone up, tariffs have gone down, some have gone away. So it could certainly affect it. But you know, that's one element of what you do that's not the entire cost of what you do. Expect that your labor will cost more later. Expect that your fuel and utilities and things like that, just because those things tend to go up. So expect that, you know, so you can figure pricing based upon that. The other side of this, as an entertainment company, if someone's inquiring 15 months out, the first thing I would do is I would ask them, have you already selected your venue or are you still working on that? Because if they've booked the venue 15 months out, why not let them book you? Right? Why not? Now, as an entertainment company, if you're a single op, or it's just you, you know, you're booking yourself for 15 months out, not a problem.

I would book myself as a speaker 15 months out, right. If I had a team, right? So if you're an entertainment company that has a team, multi op, or a photographer or any other businesses that have multiple people, you can do multiple events on a day, you know, there's never a guarantee that that person's going to be available a year from now, two years from now. I mean, you've had it where people have worked with you for a long time and then something happens. Illness happens, marriage happens, divorce happens, people move for various reasons and all of a sudden someone's not available and you have to have someone cover that. So I don't think that's any different than normal business. The fact that it's 15 months out versus six months out, that can happen to any business there. So again, as far as the suggestion for an entertainment company, if someone has not yet booked their venue and they're looking at 15 months out, I would talk to them, I would get them excited and say, listen, obviously I can't book you until I have a date. What I could do is if you have a tentative date, we and you want our services and you want to lock in a price, I can give you a price.

And then if the wedding happens within or the event happens within X number of months of that date and we're still available, then this is your price. If we're not available, you'll have you would write that into the contract. That certain time beforehand is when they would have a chance to cancel and either get a deposit back or tell them no, there's no refunds, right? There's no refunds on that. If you tell me by X time, you don't owe me the rest of the money. If you tell me closer than that, you do owe us some more money because we're holding a date for you that we can't book someone else. So, you know, if someone doesn't have a date yet and is trying to book their photographer, their florist, their dj, their band, you know, any number of services that are date dependent and they don't have a date, you know, all you can do is tentatively say, hey, if you want to lock in a price, I can do that. But the event has to happen within this time frame and I have to be available for that. And then I would talk to a lawyer and I would talk about cancellation clauses and when would they get some or any or none of their money back based upon certain things.

When would they owe you more money? If they canceled? Even if they canceled, if it's close your contract probably right now should say that they owe you money. And the closer it is, they might owe you all the money. And if they're okay with that, great. Just be prepared. Are you going to hold them to that? So again, great suggestion here. Talking about, you know, for the ask me anything. What happens when the date is far out? You know, pricing is always a challenge. I would go back again historically.

Look at that, look at what's been happening in the last couple of years with supply chain issues and things like that. Have you found alternative sources so you can keep your prices within a certain range? If you heard the episodes here, if you're a caterer, if you heard the episodes I've done with Clint or with Tripp from SB Value, talking about how you can lock in through a buying group. All right, if you haven't listened to those where you can lock in your food prices through a buying group and know that you're going to, you know, limit the amount that you'll be affected by some of those things, you know, those are some things you can do. But if someone wants to book you two years out and you know, just give them a priceI don't sell with your wallet. And if you say, listen, it's, it's 30% more than it is today, or it's 50% more than it is today, it's their wallet. If they want to lock you in for that number, great. Just be prepared to live with it. One last thing on this, I have had caterers and other people ask me, can we put a clause in our contract that prices can go up because it's far in the future based on certain things.



I am not a lawyer. I am not giving legal advice. I would have you talk to a lawyer and say, what is the legal language I can do and how is this verifiable? Right. Like when you have a variable mortgage, it's. The rate is based upon something. So if it's based on the Libor or if it's based on the U.S. treasury rate or the prime rate, that's something that's verifiable to the public. You can't just say, hey, rates went up, I'm raising your price.

So if there's something you can do, if it's based upon the consumer price index or if it's based upon the inflation index from the government by a public number that everybody can go with, say, listen, this number is this much higher than that, therefore you're paying this much more. Talk to a lawyer. Is that legally enforceable? You know, that could be a way to protect yourself as well. But you can't just say, I have the right to raise your price. Because I don't know many customers that would sign that agreement that would say, you can just raise my price at any time. Right? So I would again, talk to a lawyer, make it something that is legally enforceable and that you would be prepared to enforce. And then the other side of this, I had somebody ask me one time when during COVID you know, prices went up for food and they said, can we raise the price? I said, does your contract, they allow it? It did not. I said, just let me ask you a question, though.

Has your. Has your cost of food or supply ever gone down? And they said, yes. I said, and if you ever lowered somebody's price because of it? And they said, no. I said, okay, so you want your cake and eat it too, right? That's not really fair right now. Within a range, right? Price go up a little, go down a little bit. That's business, right? Go up a lot. If that's something, you know, again, like a tariff, if you can put that in your contract, legally enforceable, that you had a lawyer give you the right wording and it's something that someone could verify, you know, you could ask. It's up to the customer to say yes or no.

If you haven't Asked Me Anything suggestion, just go to podcast.Alanberg.com click on the Ask Me Anything button and make your suggestion there. It might make it to a future episode. So thank you for this one, and if you haven't already subscribed, please hit subscribe. And if you have the ability to put a review or a comment, we'd love for you to do that as well. If not, you could always go to Google reviewallenberg. Com thanks for listening.

I’m Alan Berg. Thanks for listening. If you have any questions about this or if you’d like to suggest other topics for “The Wedding Business Solutions Podcast” please let me know. My email is Alan@WeddingBusinessSolutions.com or you can  text, use the short form on this page, or call +1.732.422.6362, international 001 732 422 6362. I look forward to seeing you on the next episode. Thanks.

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©2025 Wedding Business Solutions LLC & AlanBerg.com


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Alan Berg, CSP, Global Speaking Fellow

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