Electronically Signed Wedding Photography Contract Template Made Easy

Initial wedding ceremony contract

what's going on my humans so you want to know how to get started in wedding videography [Music] so I'm gonna break down really quick is very simple I guess you can call it like a career path if you're interested in wedding videography and a way for you to get your foot in the door get some experience get some weddings under your belt and then eventually grow your company so right out the gate the first thing you need to do is well you're gonna have to shoot a wedding under the assumption that you can't find another videographer to work with you're gonna have to find someone willing to let you shoot their wedding for them with you having never shot a wedding before it sounds very difficult however there happens to be a lot of people out there who want wedding videography but just don't have it in the budget so if you offer to do their wedding for free you're very likely to get a yes the ways to go about this is to make a post on Craigslist that's how I did it made a post on Craigslist basically said hey I'm looking to build a wedding videography company I'm relatively new and I'm looking to shoot one two three weddings for free so if your wedding is coming up and you wanted videography but it wasn't in your budget message me and let's see if we can come to an agreement on whether or not I can shoot your wedding for you another way is to find a friend or a relative that is in the same situation that's not necessarily that that doesn't necessarily have a budget for a videography but wouldn't mind having it that also happened to me I had a good friend of mine who wanted videography but didn't have in the budget I shot their wedding for them it was my first wedding ever it was nerve-wracking but the fact that I knew that they didn't have to pay me did alleviate a lot of the stress it allowed me to feel comfortable failing or maybe not doing as good as I hoped that could have done the wedding video actually turned out really good and the couple was really happy thankfully if you can find a friend or relative that might be getting married it's definitely best to go ahead and hit them up first especially if we're doing it for free and it wasn't in their budget so now you've gone ahead you've shot a couple weddings you've learned a tremendous amount of information I'm sure you've made quite a few mistakes by now maybe on your third wedding is still trying to refine the whole technique of it all you're not really ready to but 100% on your company your brand because maybe you don't have enough experience yet you don't feel confident about it yet you're not getting enough leads yet and that's okay this is actually a good thing before you go a hundred percent full into your brand you need to make sure you have a solid product in order to do so you have to make sure you really know the ins and outs of shooting a wedding and what to expect and with three weddings is simply not enough experience so what I highly recommend doing is searching for larger companies that subcontract videographers to shoot weddings for them now by this time you have at least one to three weddings under your belt fully edited complete and you can go to these companies and say hey look I know how to shoot weddings I'd like to shoot some for you the beauty of this is that most of these companies don't require that you edit the video so all you have to do is go out there and capture it and a lot of them give you really detailed instructions on what they want captured which in turn gives you experience you start seeing things that you didn't know you should be paying attention to and you can take that and that information and that experience and apply it towards your own business when you're shooting weddings for your own company so this is a great way to get experience without the pressure of having it all on your company and risk getting like a bad Google review or a bad customer service experience because you're just not quite as experienced as you need to be so two companies that I know of personally that are nationwide that um that look for second shooters one is toast weddings you can find them on Craigslist if they're in your in your area and they're recruiting they usually post on Craigslist they might even post on indeed social search wedding videography or wedding videographer and you might find them another one is once like a spark they're primarily a photography company but they branched out and they started picking up videography gigs both of these companies are great companies to work with they don't require that you edit they usually make the process very easy and they pay so you don't have to worry about going out shooting and not getting paid for it they will take care of you so now you've shot a few weddings for another company or with another videographer or however you want about doing it you've got experience you're feeling confident it's time to go ahead and take off on your business so you can start making well a decent living some things you can actually live off of now a lot of people start off with craigslist ads that's okay to start off with just know that the type of clientele you get there usually are people looking for a budget deal kind of last-minute type stuff it's not necessarily the cream of the crop in terms of budgets so just know how much you want to make off of your weddings and know that these clients may not necessarily be willing to pay that it is a good way to get a start and to grab a cup of weddings I've done so I've gotten a couple of weddings that were last-minute because their videographer bailed on them those people aren't really in a position to negotiate you down like your price is your price you shouldn't have to to change that up because their videographer bailed it's not it's kind of them to do with you there are other platforms very major platforms that you can use to advertise there is the knot which is like the premier platform I would say probably people look at it as the number one platform for wedding vendors and basically these these these platforms provide a site for couples to go on a wedding planners to go on and find all the vendors they need for that specific event the knot is gonna be the most expensive I don't know the numbers off the top of my head it changes for different markets and different times of the year but you will probably get the most publicity there I have not myself used or not I probably will hear in the next couple years I haven't found the need to just yet another platform is wedding wire.com I actually do use wedding wire calm and I have booked a couple of weddings on wedding wire calm it is this it is a similar style and layout as the knot and often times you'll find videography companies that advertise on wedding wire and the knot it's not cheap it really isn't cheap but again it varies from your city and your market and the time of year I paid close to $100 a month for that which as I say it hurts it kind of hurts but figure if you booked one or two weddings to do any of these platforms in a year you have already paid off that yearly membership and made some money so if you booked any more than that then you're just in the plus you're just profiting off of your initial investment for advertisement and it does work I remember when I first made my website I would always go on Google and try to see if I could like search my website and it would it pop-up first on the first page or anything like that and it never did but after I signed up for wedding wire the wedding wire page with my company link to it that would pop up first on the first page if I looked up Nova weddings so it does have some SEO benefits and wedding wire I believe has improved ventually in terms of their their SEO footprint so they're getting more leads for us allegedly at least that's what they told us we'll see here so as we're going as we're going right now into wedding season try the most effective way you're gonna get leads is gonna be through referrals so hopefully by this point you have built relationships with the couples that you have shot weddings for or with the companies that you've worked with and the vendors that you see on a regular basis a good practice is that when you go to these weddings have your business card and make sure you give one to the deejay one to the photographer one to all these people because we were kind of like in a referral network and let them know that if they bring business to you you'll look out for them you know tell them hey I'll give you $100 for a referral and when those couples come to you you ask them how they heard about you and you go ahead and you know pay that vendor let that vendor know you appreciate them referring it it's happened to me I've had some referrals come my way and I definitely refer other professionals that I've worked with that I know do a good job so that's just a kind of way for us vendors in the network to look out for each other and try to bring business for each other and then you know reward that other vendor for for helping you out and helping you book a wedding there's gonna be some technical things that you're gonna have to take care of now that you're shooting weddings for your own company and the first thing you're gonna need is a contract I will include a link to a contract example that I on a Google Drive that you can download for free and you will need to change some wording in there you're gonna need to put your company name in there but it really covers all the bases you're gonna want to also adjust the time frame for completion and things like that for your company I personally asked for 30 days at least from the day I filmed the wedding to the day I complete the edit it doesn't normally take me 30 days but you never want to rush on a client's wedding get it if you're doing the editing so I like to give myself enough time so I can focus on their wedding and and really make that edit custom for that couple so check out that contract download that and make the adjustments necessary for your company so that you have that you're gonna need that do not shoot weddings without a contract all types of things go wrong that's the best of first step in setting the proper expectations between you and your clients and when you don't set the proper expectations when you're just kind of free fly yeah yeah you know I shoot the wedding for you don't worry about it you know just you know pay me you know after the wedding or something like that like that's just never good you want it completely outlined even if there's somebody you know in fact if it's somebody you know you shouldn't have a problem filling out a contract right tell them that it's helping you that it's giving you more experience in dealing with clients and contracts and things like that because you really do need that now that you've got your contract out of the way you're probably going to want to think about package options what kinds of things can you offer in your package ogresses first thing I did and I'm not ashamed of this and you should probably do it too is Google wedding videography in whatever city you're in see the companies that pop up visit their websites and see what kind of options they offer the first page companies are probably not really going to be a competition because they've been at it for a long time probably got a lot of exposure that's why they're on the first page and their product is probably a lot sharper than yours is right then and there I know I know it's a strike to the ego but you got to accept that they are also an example of what works because they've been in the business for so long and because they're on the first page of that Google search so you want to go on their website and take as many tidbits and stylized information as you can get from them especially what kind of package options they offer how many package options are they offering what do they include are they including raw footage is raw footage and extra feed are they sending a hard drive is it all digitally sent like through media Zilla calm or we transfer how exactly are they operating in your market use that and use that information and figure out how you want to make your package options understand that a lot of those companies are not editing those videos anymore they have people that do that for them and you just starting off are probably gonna have to edit yourself so take that into account and make sure you don't like give away seven different edits in a package you have to sit down and do that that's gonna take time and the last thing you want is to not be able to meet that deadline because when you fall behind that it's just it's just not good that's not good give yourself time and make sure you don't over the whelmed yourself with work I understand you want to give the client as much as possible for the least amount of money as possible because that seems like that's how you're gonna get the most work but what you're gonna wind up doing is stressing yourself out you're gonna wear yourself thin and you're not gonna want to continue doing wedding videography that can very easily happen to just about anyone so keep that in mind don't overwork yourself don't try to do everything that these huge companies are doing because they have them wanting to pay other people to do that and my last little tip for anyone starting off with wedding videography at this point in this conversation you have already shot a couple of weddings for free you have shot for other companies you are now into branding and advertising your own company you're dealing with customers they're probably the single most important thing you can do at this point is communicating with your clients stay in touch with them use Google Calendar set up tasks set up reminders to contact them some people are going to book you for a wedding seven months eight months sometimes a year in advance don't let like six months go by and you didn't just say hey as well you know happy holidays are something like reach out to them talk to them about their expectations you know set a time or a date to meet with them or at least you know set a time or date that you're gonna give them a call so you can discuss the details because they may not have them when they book you in my net they might not even have the photographer booked that a deejay yet or any of that stuff and you're gonna need to talk to those vendors at some point so you're gonna need to revisit that be organized set up reminders communicate with your clients especially after the wedding like a day or two after the wedding send them an email say hey it was great wedding I'm super excited with all the things that I I got to film for you guys I'm excited to get to work on this edit for you and I will keep you informed throughout the process and do that yeah let them know how far along an editing process you are and one's your expected completion day I don't recommend you know you sign a contract for 30 days you think you're gonna be done in two weeks it's on three weeks maybe just tell them the whole 30 days I don't know don't go tell them two weeks and then something comes up and you can't deliver that under-promise over-deliver so I hope this information was super helpful for you guys this is kind of the exact same career path I took in wedding videography I'm about almost two years into wedding videography I love it it is a is a lot of fun it was challenging at first for sure I shoot most of my weddings alone by myself and I have a good time it's just a great environment to be around everyone's happy everyone's in love and it's just you know it's it's kind of hard to not enjoy yourself when you're doing that plus you work one time a week where you have to go out and work and then the rest of the week you can edit and have free time to to do whatever it is you wanted to work on I think that's one of the reasons that most of us are so engaged with the idea of wedding videography yeah we give up we give away a Saturday but we gain so much freedom doing during the week so if you have any questions or any tips that you want to add to this please go ahead and leave them in the comments hit like if you found some of this information helpful and subscribe to my channel if you haven't already let me know if there's any other videos you would like me to bring to you guys on wedding videography videography cinematography anything like that thanks for watching and I'll see you guys next time [Music]