Woman Charges $1K to Watch Kids at Weddings (Exclusive)

Sandra Weir has 11 years of babysitting experience, but one unassuming gig in 2024 changed her business, brand and life forever.

She was hired to help a family attending a wedding, just to look out for their four kids while the parents enjoyed their night. Throughout the event, guests kept approaching Weir with the same types of questions, asking if she watches kids at weddings as a specific service. It was something she had never even thought of before then.

“It was just natural for me to go to an event with [the family] and help,” Weir, 33, tells PEOPLE one year later. “But then I saw so much potential to build something more complete.”

Then and there, the Wedding Nanny NYC was born. Weir launched her company with the intention of tailoring childcare to weddings and similarly special events. She bolstered the brand with her background in nutrition and child development, CPR certification and a general knowledge of what kids need to stay satisfied and well-behaved.

While Weir’s experience is widely applicable, she notes that wedding-sitting is different from the typical nanny job for a number of reasons. For one thing, between a ceremony and a party, weddings can run all day; it’s a far longer assignment than Mom and Dad’s date night out.

Plus, Weir usually hasn’t met the people who hire her, nor the kids she’s being asked to watch. For this reason, she always sets up a comprehensive call with the clients one week before the wedding day, just so they can run through logistics and concerns and “build a connection,” says the babysitting expert.

“We have to get to know how many children will they have, if they’re in the wedding party or if they’re just going to be children from some of the guests, so there’s a lot of factors involved,” says Weir. She’ll ask safety questions, like if the little ones have any allergies or health issues, but she also tries to get a better idea of each child’s behavioral patterns, too.

“I also want to know if they’re attached to their parents. Sometimes they’ve never had a nanny before. They haven’t been to school, so they are not used to strangers. That’s a crucial point for me to ask,” she adds.

Once they’ve ironed out the basics, Weir sends her clients a proposal to summarize how she and her team will be involved throughout the event.

The business owner says that parents most commonly worry about what could happen during the ceremony, especially when it’s a particularly religious wedding. “Especially when they’re little ones, like infants or babies. They get really worried about them crying, or getting tired or anxious,” says Weir.

Wedding portraits also tend to bring about anxiety for those with children around: “The little kids, they don’t want to be in the wedding portrait. They don’t want to take pictures. They’re tired. That’s not fun for them,” Weir notes.

But she’s prepared for those tougher moments. Weir is almost always equipped with a few ways to keep kids busy, offering them toys, coloring books or iPads, if parents can provide that technology.

“If they’re just crying at some point, we just have them sit down for a little bit and play and color. We have some stuffed animals. We have some balls also, if they want to play and run around for a little bit,” Weir recounts. “Obviously, every situation is different, but that’s what’s worked so far.”

However, the job isn’t to keep kids away from the action; it’s really to include them in all the family fun and memory-making that happens during a wedding.

“They could hire someone to stay at home or at the hotel, but in most cases, they want us to keep the children involved,” she adds. When it comes to the reception, Weir says she’ll take part in the festivities if it means the adults can spend their desired time with the kids, “We’ll be dancing with them or feeding them dinner, all that stuff.”

It’s not always just Weir running the show solo. She oversees a team of nannies, each of whom she could have assisted her on the day of, depending on how many kids Weir is hired to look after. In one instance, Weir tapped four of her employees to help watch 12 kids at a wedding. Regardless of how many sitters are on site, Weir and her team all wear black attire, including their branded Wedding Nanny NYC t-shirts.

So how much does childcare cost when it’s tailored to a wedding day and customized for any type of kid? Weir starts her “total core package” at a $1,000 fee, which covers 12 hours on-site, though clients can extend the service to 14 hours if required. If a group of charges is big enough to require more than one sitter, it’ll cost $65 per hour, per nanny.

“We pay for insurance, and we have a lot of expenses, so that’s why the prices are not what some people are expecting for us to charge,” says Weir, adding that there’s also an eight-hour package clients can purchase for $650 to start.

She’s based out of Westchester, New York, so if there happens to be a very local wedding, Weir does offer a special four-hour package. “That way we don’t have to take care about the mileage charge and all that stuff,” she says of the limited service, which starts at a $350 fee.

For the time being, Weir’s business operates within a tighter radius. She and her team will travel to any of the New York City boroughs and around Westchester, New Jersey and Long Island. Eventually, she would like to expand even further, possibly on a nationwide scale.

“I have a lot of people reaching out from other states as big as we have people from California. We have people from Texas, Chicago, everywhere. They want to bring the brand to their city,” Weir says, reflecting on her hopes for the future. “We’ve had inquiries for destination weddings. We’re not doing that yet, but it’ll be amazing if we get to do that in the future.”