The Planner’s Guide to Engagement Season Gifting

Engagement season brings a surge of excitement... new inquiries, booked clients, and the beginning of long-term relationships between planners and couples. It’s also the moment when first impressions matter most.

For wedding planners, client gifting during engagement season isn’t about extravagance or perfectly matching a couple’s personal tastes. It’s about setting the tone for how it feels to work with you. Thoughtful onboarding gifts act as an extension of your business and workflow, a quiet but powerful signal of care, professionalism, and intention.

Why Engagement Season Is a Key Moment for Client Gifting

Engagement season often marks the very beginning of a planner–client relationship. Before timelines are built and decisions are made, couples are forming their first impressions of what working together will feel like.

An onboarding gift at this stage:

Reinforces trust early
Signals organization and preparedness
Sets expectations for a thoughtful, elevated experience

Rather than being an afterthought, gifting at this stage works best when it’s integrated into your onboarding process. The gift follows alongside contracts, welcome guides, and planning next steps.

Onboarding Gifts Are an Extension of Your Business, Not a Personal Gift

One of the biggest misconceptions about client gifting is that it needs to be highly personal or tailored to a couple’s specific likes. During engagement season, that level of personalization isn’t necessary and causes a lot more angst than it should!

Onboarding gifts are appreciation gifts, not personal gifts.

Their role is to strike a balance:

Thoughtful, but not overly familiar
Beautiful, but still professional
Warm, without feeling informal or like an afterthought

At this stage, the gift represents your brand, your standards, and your workflow. It communicates how you approach details, presentation, and care, long before planning is officially underway.

What Semi-Custom Onboarding Gifting with L+P Actually Looks Like

For many planners, semi-custom onboarding gifts offer the right balance of personalization and efficiency.

At L+P, this typically includes:

A curated gift box with universally loved, high-quality products from our online store
Options to choose from a selection of ribbon that compliments your branding or add/swap certain products that have different variations like candle scents, sweet treats and gift cards!
Optional branding elements such as branded cards, tags, and packing tape

We handwrite all messages on notecards and remain a meaningful touch point, though some planners opt for typed messaging depending on volume or workflow. Either way, the goal is consistency and clarity, not reinvention for every client.

Lead Times & Workflow: How Planners Build Gifting Into Their Process

One of the advantages of semi-custom gifting is how seamlessly it fits into a planner’s workflow.

Here’s how many planners approach it:

Branding setup: One-time production of branded materials takes approximately 1–2 weeks
Fulfillment: Once branding is on file, gift orders are fulfilled within 1–3 business days
Timing: Gifts can be sent as soon as a client books on your end and you process your order!

This structure allows gifting to become a plug-and-play part of onboarding, rather than an extra task competing for attention during a busy booking season.

What We’re Seeing Planners Spend on Engagement Season Gifts

From our experience, most planners are spending between $75–$125 per couple on onboarding gifts.

This price point works because it:

Feels generous without being excessive
Allows for quality products and thoughtful presentation
Is sustainable and repeatable across a full booking season

Consistency matters more than creativity here. A well-curated gift at this range communicates value, professionalism, and care without putting pressure on planners to outdo themselves with each client.

Why Curated Gifts Work Better Than Overthinking Every Detail

During engagement season, planners are managing inquiries, consultations, new contracts, vendors, admin tasks and a million other things on their never ending to-do list. Overthinking client gifting can quickly become a source of friction and create inconsistency in a workflow.

Curated gifts solve this by:

Eliminating decision fatigue
Offering products that feel universally appreciated
Ensuring presentation is handled thoughtfully and professionally

Rather than starting from scratch with each client, planners benefit from having a reliable gifting option that reflects their brand standards every time.

Subtle Branding as Part of the Client Experience

When done well, branding doesn’t feel promotional, it feels reassuring.

Subtle branded elements:

Reinforce professionalism
Create cohesion between onboarding materials and planning experience
Help clients associate care and attention with your brand

Whether it’s a branded card, tag, or packing detail, these touches quietly elevate the client experience and make onboarding feel intentional rather than transactional.

Who Typically Receives an Onboarding Gift

In most cases, planners send one onboarding gift per couple. This keeps gifting streamlined and aligned with the core client relationship.

Occasionally, a gift may also be sent to a parent or family member if they are the primary point of contact. The key is to keep gifting purposeful and aligned with communication dynamics, not automatic or excessive.

A Calm, Repeatable Approach to Engagement Season Gifting

Engagement season is not the time to reinvent your process with every booking. The most effective gifting strategies are the ones that are:

Repeatable
Thoughtful
Integrated into your existing workflow

When gifting supports your systems instead of complicating them, it becomes a meaningful extension of your business, not another task to manage.

Ready to Simplify Your Onboarding Gifting?

Engagement season is about setting the tone for the relationship ahead. If you’re looking for a thoughtful, professional way to welcome clients without overthinking every detail, semi-custom onboarding gifts offer a flexible, elevated starting point.

→ Book semi-custom onboarding gifts for engagement season