Last Updated: February 14th, 2020
It’s often weird for us to think of ourselves as “wedding vendors.”
This is probably because our role in the wedding day as photographers tends to be more relationship oriented when compared with other vendors on the day. While most wedding vendors will have some initial consultations, they don’t tend to be as closely invested in their clients. Through meetings and an engagement session, we go into the wedding day with more of an intimate connection with our clients. Unlike a DJ or florist, we often do a good deal of “running the show” on the wedding day, too – especially when there is no planner on hand.
Despite this experience, at the end of the day, we are just vendors like the rest of the folks who are paid professionals.
For today, we want to talk about 10 challenges every wedding vendor can relate to. By the time a wedding day rolls around, we all have to work together to create an experience for our mutual clients that is greater than the sum of its parts.
1). There are no real industry standards.
All wedding vendors tend to create their own standards. Most of us are self employed and run our own businesses. There is no one size fits all solution. For sure, we were never given a handbook of all the expected practices when we started our wedding photography business.
Through reading online and talking to other vendors, there are absolutely some norms. But, these ultimately serve as guidelines, and the standard is what you decide to make it – and what the market will allow.
In the world of wedding photography, much heated discussion takes place about whether or not to deliver RAW image files to clients. We’ve had to face this question ourselves when asked about them. While everyone has an opinion, and maybe the “norm” seems to be that wedding photographers should not provide these – it really is just a guideline, and every photographer will do what they want.
Ways to Cope:
- Get informed about what is expected in your industry. You can do this by talking with other wedding vendors in your local area, or joining discussions online. On the latter, we joined several groups on Facebook and participate in forums on Reddit to stay in the know.
- Define your standards to your clients. Whatever you do, have a good explanation to provide your clients. A lot of things aren’t too difficult if you are upfront – even about things where you might differ drastically from other vendors.
2). Excessively demanding clients.
All wedding vendors need to be customer service oriented. Unlike other customer service jobs out there, our work takes place on one of the most stressful and important days of a person’s life. Generally speaking, most people are only going to get married once – so our performance needs to be on point at each wedding.
While some demands may be normal and expected and we know how to help clients manage concerns and stress that comes on the big day, sometimes there are clients who are a little (or a lot) excessive in their demands. Every wedding vendor niche will likely have some specific demand that is seen time and again.
In photography, while we haven’t really experienced this much ourselves, we have heard of demands to basically replicate another photographer’s work. And usually that work is found via Pinterest.
Ways to Cope:
- Set expectations early and often. The easiest way to eliminate demanding clients is to set clear expectations and boundaries. This can sometimes start as early as the first contact. It should absolutely begin before signing a contract and working together. While it’s impossible to cover everything, it’s good to address the client’s expectations from you & your expectations from them early. As wedding vendors are often hired a year or 2 in advance, you may need to revisit or reset these expectations down the line, too.
- Evaluate the demands and really ask yourself if they are reasonable, not reasonable, or misunderstood. It’s easy for tired and stressed out wedding vendors to be a little overly dramatic. This can lead to feeling like a client is being really demanding, but in reality…maybe they’re not. Sometimes, you just need to take a step back and actually think about what is being said. Maybe most importantly, approach things from a place of empathy. That is: understand planning a wedding and actually getting married is a stressful thing, and sometimes stress causes even the sweetest person to turn a little sour sometimes.
3). Low cost competition.
One of the biggest struggles more established wedding professionals face is needing to be competitive and persuasive when there are so many newcomers joining the industry every day. Photographers are a dime-a-dozen. Wedding planners are self-made. The list goes on…
While some clients may be lost to these more inexpensive alternatives, they likely aren’t your ideal client. While less people are getting married, plenty of people still want good wedding vendors to work for them. Our perspective has always been that “we just need a slice of the pie.”
Ways to Cope:
- Offer a great product. As wedding vendors, we sometimes get worked up by the amount of newcomers out there. But, in practice, most industries have new start ups joining the fray all the time. The “big guys” on top tend to stay there because they offer something better than others. For most companies, this begins by offering a great product people want to pay for. As you build a reputation and get reviewed more and more, you can begin to maintain higher prices on experience and reputation alone.
- Have top notch customer service. A lot of the time, people care less about the end product, and more about the service you provide to them. As wedding photographers, showing up a little early, being attentive to client requests, and so on – all play a huge role. Answering emails and setting up extra meetings just to help calm the nerves also is HUGE for us.
- Price yourself competitively and use upsells. If you still feel you’re a little too highly priced, use a different pricing structure. We talk about some pricing options in The Wedding Photography Business Starter Guide.
4). Saturated markets.
Going hand-in-hand with having a lot of low cost competition is just having a lot of competition.
It’s easier than ever for people to get into many wedding vendor practices these days such as photography, DJ’ing, making florals or jewelry, etc. This is because these industries have become less expensive to enter than they were in the past. You can get decent photography gear for relatively low cost. The same goes with DJ equipment. And so on…
Of course, there is a range in pricing, style, expertise, business experience, and so on – but, in practice, prospective clients have virtually unlimited options to choose from.
Ways to Cope:
- Compete with yourself, not with others. In the wedding industry, cutthroat competition doesn’t really add a huge amount of value to anyone. Working together and collaborating with other vendors is a great thing. When it comes to attracting new clients, your goal shouldn’t be to talk down others, but instead do things to help elevate yourself from where you were before. This tenant of competing with yourself (to continually better and improve yourself, and your business), and not with others, is central to the concept of playing an infinite game, as opposed to a finite game. Ethnographer and leadership expert, Simon Sinek (author of The Infinite Game), delves more into this interesting and compelling subject matter in the following videos:
- Understand what slice of the pie you need. No matter how bogged down the industry you are in may be, you need to keep in mind that you only need a small portion of the pie. As an example, we maintain pretty serious control over our finances and based on our current pricing only need to book 10 weddings a year to cover our personal expenses (mortgage, bills, food, etc.). Anything else is extra and goes towards savings, travel, home repairs, etc. Looking at it in this way makes it far more manageable.
5). Working with bad vendors.
One of the more underrated challenges wedding vendors face is having to work with other vendors that aren’t so great. Sometimes, there isn’t a huge impact. For example, the DJ probably doesn’t care too much if the flower arrangements aren’t that great. However, other vendor relationships do overlap a lot more heavily.
The easiest example of this is when photographers and videographers need to work together. While these can sometimes come as a packaged deal through a single company, often times couples will hire each separately. Since video and photo are so closely related, being able to work together well is essential.
One area where we’ve experienced issues is when a videographer was making unwanted comments to the bride, groom, and some of their family. To people who don’t clearly know our relationship, it could be viewed as us working together and through the same company. This, in turn, reflects negatively on our brand.
Ways to Cope:
- Stay professional. 100% – you need to keep level headed and do the job you are being paid to do. Keep your interactions minimal if needed to get the job done.
- Talk to them in private. If there is something going on that is negatively impacting your ability to work, pull them aside and talk in private. Most of the time, other vendors just don’t realize that something is being done that is impacting you in such a way. Of course, there are some bad vendors out there – and talking may or may not be useful.
- Blacklist those you do not want to work with again. After the wedding is over, you absolutely have a right to say “I won’t work with X again.” Wedding venues do this often enough, but other vendors can if needed, too. This is really a last resort, and the only way to enforce would be to make it clear to clients upfront and put into contractual writing.
6). Budget restrictions.
It’s reasonable for people to have budgets. Sometimes, we get into this illusion that people have an unlimited amount of money to spend when looking into wedding vendor services. Most people want really great vendors, but only some people want or can afford them.
There is a reason our wedding packages sell for $3,000 – $4,000+ – our work quality, customer service, experience, etc. But, it’s obvious not everyone has this kind of extra money to spend.
For wedding vendors, the challenge is made more difficult when available funds need to be distributed across different vendors. Often, the most money will go to the wedding venue. If a client has a $40,000 budget, and spends $30,000 on the venue space – they need to distribute 10k on catering, DJ/band, photography, florals, and so on. This can get tight really quickly.
Ways to Cope:
- Offer discounts. Sometimes, an ideal client comes along but you are just out of price range for them. After weighing the pros and cons, offering a discount can sometimes make someone a client. Generally, we don’t give out discounts – but have done it in the past for weddings that would benefit our portfolio to help us better attract more ideal clients. It’s a calculated risk, but on our end – it has worked out for us. And it’s led to referrals at our regular prices – so it pays for itself over time, sometimes.
- Accept your pricing and wait until a higher paying client comes around. Alternatively, if someone approaches you and you are out of their budget range – just say “sorry” and let them move along to find someone less expensive. We know not everyone can afford a $4,000 wedding photography package – but that’s really the point. We want a more specific type of client – one that is willing to invest in photography, not just tack it on.
7). The long buying cycle.
Prospective clients will be checking out your work often well in advance of actually booking with you (or anyone else). For example, a couple with a 2 year engagement might spend a year looking for the perfect vendor.
Once they reach out, it’s becoming increasingly common for people to “ghost” you (even after talking on the phone or meeting in person).
Ways to Cope:
- Be responsive. From the first time you are contacted by a prospective client, it’s essential to be responsive. Follow up quickly, answer questions, and enable future correspondence.
- Accept the gigs you lose are not your ideal clients. Early on in our career, we had lost a few gigs that felt like sure things. It sucks, but you need to grin and bear it. Those people aren’t your ideal client, anyways.
- Prepare by enhancing your brand. Most importantly, do what you can to make your brand more attractive and visible to prospective clients. Fix up your website. Clean up your portfolio. Showcase only your best. Show that your active. Engage with people on social media (like Instagram). Create a solid marketing campaign. Order business cards. The list goes on and on…
8). The need for quick booking solutions.
So you finally have a client ready to book with you. That’s a great thing! But…are you making this an easy process? We’ve heard of a lot of wedding vendors, especially newer and less experienced ones, having booking processes that are just cumbersome. This means: the process of booking gets in the way. By doing this, it can actually deter some clients. As we know, nothing is set in stone until a contract is signed and retainer payment is made.
Ways to Cope:
- Get a dedicated CRM platform. We use Honeybook – which is really designed with wedding vendor professionals in mind. This is an online platform that let’s you send contracts and invoices, and handle all of the signing and payments virtually. It makes things really simple for you and your clients. It is 100% worth it. Read our review if you’re interested.
9). Seasonal booking limitations.
In most parts of the world, there is a high season and a low season for weddings. Here in Pennsylvania, most people get married in the spring and fall months. It’s easy to imagine why given the weather is nice, and the colors outside tend to be more romantic and gorgeous. Summer months bring high heat, and winter months bring bitter cold. Of course – weddings still happen during the off season, there are just less of them.
Because of the seasonal nature of weddings, it can force wedding vendors to do a lot of work in a small period of time. This includes working back-to-back wedding days, which is very difficult.
Ways to Cope:
- Offer seasonal discounts. Sometimes, in order to book off season gigs, it’s easiest when you offer discounts or off season pricing.
- Do other work in the off season. As wedding vendors, our skills are usually able to be transferred to other work, too. As photographers, we do a lot of engagement sessions, family shoots, portraits, and so on. A DJ could easily transfer their talent to other types of events (think: parties, corporate events, etc.). The list goes on.
- Diversify your revenue streams. Think outside of your specific industry niche. While we love photography and make money through photography, it’s not the only way to make money. Some things we do include: selling prints and albums through Pixieset. We started this blog and monetize through affiliate marketing. The sky is really the limit if you think outside of the box.
10). The economy.
Lastly, people spend less money on weddings when the economy isn’t doing so well. When things are on the upswing, people are more willing to spend more and more. While economists try, it’s hard to really predict where the economy will be even in a year – so there is a gamble to our lines of work either way.
Ways to Cope:
- Have good financial habits – both personal and business. The root of being financially stable is to make good purchasing decisions, save more than you think you need, and spend only when you really need to. Our yearly “life costs” add up to about $30,000/yr for the two of us (so: $15,000/yr per person). This means each of us only really need salaries of $20k each or 40k combined to cover these costs. As we make more than this, the rest goes into savings, travel spending, retirement planning, and so on.
- Prepare for the worst. When possible, put more money into savings in case of a rainy day.
Wedding vendors face a lot of challenges.
Those who are smart and willing to take on the risks can really reap some wonderful rewards, and work in an industry that is equally rewarding. It’s amazing, having worked the past few months over 100 hours a week – shooting weddings, editing photos, responding to emails, meeting new people…we’re still up for more. As challenging as it is, every time we see a great review or get a message back saying “I love the photos!” – it makes our hearts melt.
Through all the challenges and setbacks, this is why we do what we do.
What are some challenges you’ve experienced as a wedding vendor?