(FORTUNE Magazine) – So you work a 15-hour day. That doesn't excuse you from paying your parking tickets. Nor will the dog understand if you don't get home in time to let him drag you around the block before bed. As for that big company event coming up, you'd better have something to wear other than those old brown shoes. Fear not. Even if you can't budget in a full-time servant, somebody out there can help -- for a fee. Be it something as simple as running errands or as complicated as planning your firstborn's wedding, a specialist has likely opened shop with you in mind. Personal services companies have been around a long time, but the supply and the scope are growing rapidly to meet increasing demand. Mary Burke co-founded Manhattan Intelligence, a referral company that began operating six months ago with a computerized database of these service firms, which charge from $10 an hour for dog walking up to $75 an hour for more complicated tasks. She explains: ''People don't have the time. They don't have the expertise. And they don't have the spouse.'' In the olden days people hired a housekeeper, a caterer, or a decorator, depending on their needs. Requirements today are often more complicated. Gail Perl & Carol Berliner, a two-woman operation in New Jersey, will handle everything for a party or wedding -- the invitations, the music, the RSVPs, and the honeymoon reservations, not to mention the food. Fee for arranging a wedding: $4,000. You can even get help with the jobs that might fall between the cracks, or assistance coordinating the helpers. Dixie Reinhardt started Consider It Done with partner Stephanie Sills last November because ''there are specialists and we all know they're out there. But the busier we become, the more we need someone to handle everything.'' Recent missions for the Manhattan partners have included finding and delivering organically grown turkeys to a customer's business clients and installing a large television in another customer's antique cabinet at home. While most personal services operations wouldn't show up on a FORTUNE 500,000 list, larger companies are also starting to accommodate employees and customers who work beyond the bounds of 9 to 5. Gary Hayes, a consultant who helps corporations set up assistance for workers, notes, ''People used to think of employee assistance programs as a place to go if you had substance- % abuse problems.'' Today, he says, companies will be just as likely to offer child care or elder care referral. Last year Lord & Taylor joined a lengthening list of department stores that routinely set up personal appointments between busy customers and salespeople. Shoppers Express, founded three years ago to bring telephone grocery shopping to major supermarkets, plans to double the number of stores it serves by April. The company has worked with A&P, Safeway, and other chains mainly in the Northeast, where killing workweeks have arguably taken root most firmly. But the company's expansion plans suggest that no part of the U.S. is immune to the trend. Shoppers Express will be coming soon to Northern California, Denver, Phoenix, Houston, Atlanta, Nashville, and Portland, Oregon. Hold on -- help may be on the way.