Wedding Bliss #2:The Bride From HECK

I dont do weddings, never have, never will but i would have thought that a detailed letter of engagement setting out the scope of the work, the various responsibilities of the parties and the basis of the fee would stop some of this.

By the way Bloo dog, you could have put the embarassing pictures as a link for us all to see!!!

Ok, perhaps not!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yeah. You would think!

It seems that on the wedding day, emotions, the need to get the details perfect (thus taking up a lot of time), or people who just don't give a hoot, unforeseen circumstances, all can get in the way. It is a job, dealing with people, and sh** happens!

As far as after the wedding and the aspects of orders and such, some folks have selective memory, or try to screw you out of more than they paid for. But, this happens in lots of businesses...

My 2+ cents.

At every wedding reception where I have photographed, all of the "hired help" is seated at one common table, which is generally the one farthest to the back. That includes photographers, assistants, videographers, sound technicians, and all that sort.

That's OK. We all sit there, quietly exchanging trade secrets and chatting. Then, all of a sudden, the next reception stunt begins, so we all leap to our feet with our equipment dangling around our necks. Our food and drink goes untouched for those 5-10 minutes, and then we all return to the hired help table.

It beats a sharp stick in the eye.

---Bob Gross---

...and the help has cleaned it off!

Please post pictures for the group to enjoy

I told two of my friends about your wedding Bloo Dog (one married and one to be). They couldn't believe their ears! The one who's going to be married in April promised to be an angel. She even promised me to keep the champagne out of my reach...

Ok you got me a bit freaked.
So how would you go about protecting yourself from nightmare B & G's?! Write up really super duper good contracts or what? I mean no everyone will get drunk, high or whatever. =o/

Thanks for your horror story, sure brings the whole business back into focus that not everything is peaches and cream.

I think you should give this some serious consideration! There could be a lot of "L"s in there for you.
Use online publishing to keep costs at a minimum. Don't forget scandalous pics of the B&G with black rectangles over their faces.

You can publish a book through www.lulu.com and pay a per print price. Example $5.50 or something for the binding, then 2 cents per page for b&w, or 15 cents per page for color *note you can only go all b&w or all color*. So you can get a book that will cost you less than $10, sell it for $20, and make like $8 from each sale *they take a cut of the profit for cc fee's, etc* and sell it right from the website. ISBN is like $35 or something and ISBN pro to get it listed in barns and noble, etc is like $150 or something. Both are optional.

It doesnt seem like it would be to much work. Just type each story up in word, and refer to each story/chapter in a table of contents. :0)

It would be a really good read.

This reminds me of something you'd see on www.etiquettehell.com. There are some astounding people out there.

If you interview the couple at thier house, I can see walking out, but what if their at your office? I would find it hard to ask them to leave just like that. And their perception from that might be that once the legal talk started I got scared and sent them away. There might not be good word of mouth after that.

Ive been lucky, every wedding ive assissted went well and the couple/parents were all nice. Of course I dont see what goes on after the fact since im just assisting on the day.

I'm going to go read everything you've ever written here, I swear. Totally entertaining!

Funnnnnnnnnnnny.

The only thing is I am starting to get calls for weddings. I am thinking really hard about going down this path.

Bloo Dog,

I have to thankyou for such an entertaining post, I myself am looking at getting into Wedding photography and I can honestly say that you've probably helped me cover a few more bases that I would have never thought of having to cover.

All the best with shooting,

Crimsonn