Messages, response time & availability

Families reach you two ways: a quick quote request and direct messages. This article covers messaging, the response-time badge, and your availability calendar.

The message centre

When a family messages you, you'll see a badge on the chat icon in the header and get a "New message" notification. Reply from the Messages area (also linked in your dashboard). Conversations are private, text-only, and update live while the page is open. Families see a Read mark once you've opened their message.

Replying quickly and warmly is one of the best things you can do — most families choose a vendor partly on how responsive they feel.

Your response-time badge

Once you've replied to a few conversations, your profile, your search listings, and your analytics page show a friendly band like "Usually responds within an hour." It's based on how quickly you typically send your first reply over the last 90 days — so the faster you tend to answer, the better it reads. It only appears after a few conversations, so one slow reply won't define you.

Marking dates unavailable

Under Dashboard → Availability, add date ranges when you're already booked or away. This never hides your profile and never blocks messages. What it does: when a family searches by their event date, vendors who've marked that date unavailable show lower down in the results, labeled for that date — so you get fewer dead-end enquiries while staying fully visible. Remove a range any time.