Image Viewing Session

I have noticed that a lot of successful photographers offer image viewing sessions to show their clients their wedding photos from the first time.
For those of you that offer Image viewing sessions to your wedding clients, I was wondering what is your process.

How do you set it up?
- Slideshow, proof prints, etc
- Do you offer food and beverages

What do you go over?

Do you try and upsell anything? If so, what(albums, canvases, etc)?

I used to. I would take the processed files to the clients' house and we'd usually watch it on an HDTV (everyone has one these days, and most have USB ports; I also have an HDMI adapter for my Mac, just in case). However, I stopped doing it for two reasons:
a) I wasn't making any $$ from it and, more importantly,
b) it seemed like the couples wanted to be alone when they saw them for the first time

I still bring an extensive slideshow, and albums, to each initial interview but I've decided to let the newlyweds have that Christmas-morning-experience all to themselves when it comes to viewing their own images.

Initial album design only. I don't have time to sit and look at the 300-400 selects.

I make all the album photo choices for the first draft. After I have sent them all their edited photos on disc I then send the client an username and password to an online version of the album like this one as well as sending out a high resolution PDF of the proof album. The couples then advise me of changes via email (if there are any).

Having clients go though and select for an 80 page album would take forever.

I don't upsell either however quite a few of the couples buy parent albums.

At initial meetings with potential clients I just show them a few sample albums.

I ALWAYS do this, for a couple of reasons.

One is that if I give a client a disc with 1,000 images and don't do a showing, I haven't shown them what "telling the story of their day in pictures" which is what we all claim to do can look like. Also, when they're first seeing their images, it becomes a prime selling opportunity for albums (which, of course, are an emotional purchase to begin with).

So I pull out my 200 or so favorite, put together a slideshow with soundbed hosted on my Zenfolio site, we view them, then I talk about albums, how to order prints, etc. The slideshow also gets posted on my Facebook page. Plus the couple sends the link of their slideshow to others which drives traffic.

I can't imagine doing it any other way.

I do it for portraits... projected onto a huge screen in my studio. But not for weddings. It just didn't seem to work as well for me. I dunno.