If you read through a bridal magazine, you will notice that there will be plenty of ‘How-to’ articles and ‘What questions to ask’ advice pieces. There’s a reason behind this of course. For the most part, planning a wedding will be a very new experience for those about to embark on married life and guidance will be really important. Because of this, it isn’t uncommon for the happy couple to be full to the brim with questions, no matter what you are offering them: a venue, the food, photography. They will want to know about sizes, options and prices, and how you can help them to create their special day.

So, in order to get this show on the road, your potential customers will surely be bursting with questions. Weddings are a costly business, and everyone wants to get value for their money. It’s also not unheard of for a couple to have been planning their wedding for a long time, and a lot of women have a set visual from when they were younger of how their magical day will pan out.

Because of this, ask them to bring ideas, cut-outs, and notes. This is particularly relevant for venues or dressmakers.

Photographers like me will get asked a lot of the same questions over and over again. But it’s really important to not become irritated. Any kind of negative attitude could cross you off their list altogether. After all, for you it might just be another day ‘at the office’ but for them, it’s a time of excitement and hope.

I find that if you are receiving a lot of the same questions, it may be a good idea to compile these into a ‘Frequently Asked Questions’ area on your website, and point them in the direction of it prior to discussing any further details.

This way, if your services aren’t what they’re after, they know immediately and don’t need to waste your time meeting in person. If the details look promising, you are more likely to get a better discussion about the event. This is essential as specifics could be lost in translation over phone or e-mail.

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As a wedding photographer, are you including an album with every package that you offer clients? I didn’t used to but I have recently changed this so that I do.

It’s been a huge few years for wedding photography. The arrival of affordable digital SLRs have of course impacted massively on how many people now offer their services as wedding photographers. It feels like a buyers market a lot of the time as anyone looking to book a wedding photographer in the UK has a huge amount of us to choose from. Potential clients are often putting their demands in at the initial enquiry stage instead of waiting to see what you offer.  As an extreme example, I had this in my inbox a while back…

Dear Sir/Madam,

I am writing to you regarding a wedding taking place on XX of XXXXXX 2012.

If you are available for this date, I have a bride and groom looking for a photographer to capture a full day. They are, however, on an extremely tight budget.  The absolute maximum they may be able to stretch to, would be £400 for the total costings. The wedding is in XXXX Church with the reception to follow, down the road. It was originally planned that a friend would be photographing the events of the day, but it has recently come to light that this may not now be possible.

Ideally they are looking for the following:
2 Photographers
Coverage from preparation to first dance
Full copyright of all pictures
An Album

Needless to say I responded with ‘Dear Sir/Madam, thanks for your truly delightful email but I am busy for that day, in fact that whole year.’ I have also had lots of enquiries that state “We don’t need an album as we will be doing our own”. Of course if you are including the high resolution files in their package then they are very welcome to. But check up on those clients a year or even two down the line and see if they ever made that album. Or go back through your weddings and look at who was definitely going to order an album from you and see if they ever did. In the planning stages of a wedding, a few hundred pounds on an album to proudly display your wedding day can seem perfectly reasonable in the grand scheme of things. However after the wedding, when maybe the washing machine breaks down or they start to think about having a family, that chunk of money on a wedding album can now seem like quite a lot to find. Two thirds of couples overspend significantly on their wedding budget and often take quite some time to pay it all off. As photographers you will find that more often than not you will be missing the window of opportunity on providing a wedding album.

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Almost exclusively the Green Room centres on the successful businesses, the people who run them and the strategies they employ to get, and stay, where they are. These are all super-important and you should be learning something from every article but we have absolutely neglected something equally critical from these pages. Something it took me too long and too much effort to realise on my own.

You might have already read about how this blog came to be, Kat has written about it on a couple of occasions but it’s necessary to go over it one more time to get this rarely discussed point across. This time the story will be from my perspective. And as everybody knows there are always two sides to a story.

A few years ago Kat was working nightshifts, five days a week, including covering the weekends. I was running a small IT company with a friend who I knew from college. In spite of my innovative ideas the business was merely treading water and the work was extremely stressful. I vividly recall several times when one wrong move would have lost millions of pounds worth of data, forever. As much as I love computers (and working with enterprise servers and infrastructure is awesomely exciting) I love my wife even more, she was my only motivation. Providing for my wife was the only reason I stayed at it. I wasn’t making much money but I had the potential, if things really took off, to give us a comfortable life.

The problem was our work schedules conflicted horribly; we had two short evenings in the week when we could spend any time together. Out of this we spawned ‘date night’, which I later found out is nowhere near a unique idea. We would go out to a restaurant, see a movie, and just spend ‘quality time’ together, which I later found out is also a euphemism. This worked really well for a while, until the blog started to take more of Kat’s time. While not working her day (night) job, Kat was busy working on the blog. Seeking out new photographers, posting content, and getting involved in forums and groups. It didn’t take long until I spent more of our date night staring at the back of a mobile phone than into my wife’s eyes. This was a serious issue, more so since at this stage the blog was making no money (we did not accept advertising requests until much later) so it seemed like a sacrifice without purpose. I felt like the only thing that was, is, important to me was becoming harder and harder to reach.

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Photography Credit: Devlin Photos (full wedding on the blog soon)

So you have worked your ass off and your business is blooming, great! Good for you, give yourself a big pat on the back. Well if you can find the time that is. Working for yourself has many benefits, who hasn’t started their working day in their pyjamas or just not gone back to your desk after getting distracted by the shops when you only popped out for lunch? If like me, you are doing a job that you love then it can be a pretty fulfilling lifestyle and you never have to worry about being told off by the boss.

I hope you have some kind of marketing strategy that it is paying off and the bookings are coming in. However the wedding industry is very seasonal, especially here in the UK so between May and September it’s all too easy to kiss goodbye to any kind of social life. There have been times that if it wasn’t for Facebook, I wouldn’t have a clue what anyone I know is up to. The first year that I switched to shooting weddings on digital, I worked for 7 days a week for the best part of eight months straight. I had been shooting weddings most weekends on film that would be collected on a Tuesday by the lab and then delivered back on Thursday as finished prints. I had time for daytime coffees with friends and evening yoga classes. When I switched over to shooting weddings on my Canon 5D MK II, I became the lab and suddenly was spending more time with my iMac than my family.

I worked hard on my brand and website and started to feel the benefits in terms of how quickly I was getting booked up and the rates I could charge. But what was the point if I never got the chance to enjoy the benefits? So I made a few changes that have helped enormously.

♥ I streamlined my post production.
♥ I became very disciplined about my workflow.
♥ Then I trained one of my second shooters, to process and edit images in the way I want them.
♥ I invested in a second iMac so we can work at the same time or I can run different high powered applications simultaneously.

Photography Credit: Devlin Photos

Top – Unedited RAW file
Middle – Basic edit (done by assistant)
Bottom – Personalised action edit

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