If you’re currently only selling digital files, have you considered what in-person sales (IPS) may do for your wedding photography business? If you're an 'artist first, businessperson second' wedding photographer, you may despise the idea of selling. But IPS can help you attract more clients, earn significantly more money, and make your clients happier in the long run. It’s simpler than you may think, and this article will break down everything you need to know to start using IPS in your wedding photography business.

So IPS does absolutely work for weddings. But there are two things you have to start with:

1. Believe in the value of what you are offering

It’s important to remember that weddings are crazy and often overwhelming events for couples. They have to make so many decisions and plan so many things, and by offering to print their memories for them we can take another major decision off their plate and offer huge value to them.

When I was married, we hired a photographer who used the “shoot and burn” model. After the wedding, he delivered a CD with - get this - 1200 images. I was a young bride, trying to set up my first home, writing thank-you notes and starting a new job and getting used to being married…. Printing anything off that disc seemed virtually impossible. I knew it would take hours to even scroll through all the images, much less choose the ones I wanted, decide on how to print them, etc. So I just…. Didn’t. I put off this task as weeks turned into months and months turned into years. 7 or 8 years later I realized I still hadn’t printed anything, so I got a few small 5x7s made and… that was all I did, for many more years. I know for a fact that if our photographer had reached out in those early days and offered to help me make an album or some art for our new home, I would have been thrilled and taken him up on it.

Remember that you are truly offering your clients a valuable service and you can be proud about that. So many other photographers won’t take that extra step to make sure their clients are able to enjoy their photographs both now and for generations to come… but YOU are, and that’s something very special.

2. Set Expectations

I say this so often because it’s really the key to avoiding a ton of issues that can pop up down the road. When incorporating IPS into your workflow, start by setting expectations up front as clearly as you can. Right from the start, discuss your process and emphasize how your ordering process will make your clients’ lives easier.

But in order to make this a smooth experience, it’s key to make sure that everyone is on the same page from the very beginning. So from the very beginning, show your products on your website and social media prominently. Discuss your process and how you incorporate photo products and heirlooms into your brand. You also want to show your sample products from the initial meeting or consultation, and discuss any expectations you have so everyone is clear and comfortable.

How to handle engagement and bridal sessions

Weddings are such an exciting time, and many couples are eager to add on another session or two (or three) to their wedding collection if this is offered. Engagement sessions are obviously very popular. But some photographers also sell bridal sessions, boudoir, day-after sessions, and other options as add-ons.

So how do you work these into your sales strategy when you are already hired to photograph the wedding?

In short, I recommend offering a complimentary engagement session with each wedding collection, with the assumption that most clients will take advantage of this offer. However, it is important to note that you’re only making the session itself included complimentary…. Any prints or digital images they want to purchase can be done at an IPS appointment after the session, and here is the key, using your regular portrait price list.

Now here’s the reason for this. Your goal when booking a wedding is likely to work with these clients again for other milestones. You want to build a relationship With these clients that is going to last. You want them to you for anniversary portraits and maternity and newborn portraits and family portraits down the road… If you start with this Sales method, your clients will be very comfortable with this and will easily transition into long-term family portrait clients without any confusion.

So I recommend making the engagement session a complimentary addition to every wedding package, as I said, and let the clients know that you recommend these sessions as a great way to get to know each other and make sure everyone is as comfortable as possible on the wedding day - it’s kind of a ‘trial run’ - and in addition, you’ll get great portraits that they will love! They can purchase whatever they’d like from their engagement session once they’ve seen the proofs, and you offer a selection of wall art, prints, albums, etc.

What if they ask to skip the engagement session? If someone asks if they can skip the engagement session in order to save money, which happens occasionally, you can let them know that they are certainly welcome to skip it, but you don’t recommend it, because it won’t change the price of the collection since it is offered as a complimentary service.

When it comes to those other add-on sessions, like bridal sessions and day-after sessions, I would recommend offering those as optional add-ons by charging a simple flat session fee that covers your time to photograph that session (maybe $300-$500), but again, that is just for the session itself; any prints and products can be purchased separately just like a regular portrait session and at your regular prices.

What to include in your collections

I’ve said it before, but I think it bears repeating. Weddings are complicated events which can cause a lot of stress for couples, so anything you can do to simplify the process and make your offerings easy to understand will go a long way toward winning the trust of your clients.

If you choose to offer collections to your wedding clients, as many photographers do, a few basic keys are recommended:

Keep it simple!
Don’t offer too many collections
Offer a variety of products
Add up-sell options

Let’s dive into these a little bit.

How simple is simple? I always say that if you can’t explain your pricing to a 4th grader in under 3 minutes, it’s too complicated. Your pricing ideally should fit on a single page and be easy for you to memorize and explain to your clients. Anything that is confusing, complex, needs asterisks, or takes a PhD to understand, is far too much and will confuse your clients. And remember, a confused mind won’t choose.

So, to keep this simple, you don’t want to offer too many collections or options for people to choose from. I recommend 3 basic collections, with the middle being the one you plan to sell most often. The lowest collection should be priced high enough to still be profitable for you, but shouldn’t contain nearly as many perks as the middle. The goal is to move people away from that lowest collection and towards the middle. The top collection should be priced uncomfortably high for you and have all the bells and whistles. People will occasionally purchase it, but more often it will serve as a price anchor to make that middle collection look more comfortably affordable…. Again steering people towards what you want them to purchase.

Let’s address the elephant in the room - digital images. You’re likely wondering how to fit digitals into your pricing. Well I’m going to go with the basic assumption that most photographers these days DO want to offer digital images in each collection. There are some photographers who choose not to sell digitals at all, but I’d wager that at least 9 out of 10 wedding photographers do sell digitals. So how do we fit them into our collections? I recommend building each collection around a variety of products. You may choose to have a certain number of digital images included, for example, along with a 10x10 album with their favorite 100 images (which you can upsell to include more images or additional cover options or companion albums). That collection could also include a $500 print credit which they can redeem toward small or large prints for their home, to encourage them to purchase more artwork after the wedding. The key here is to include some digitals, but you don’t need to overwhelm your clients with an enormous number, like my nightmare of having 1200 images to go through after my wedding. Then you also want to offer some printed products in each collection so they have something to walk away with -- I like each of my clients to have an album and a wall portrait, so I include those in each collection. Last, you want to encourage them to order more so getting them started with a print credit can be a great way to do that. With variety like this, you’re sure to please your clients but without overwhelming them with too many options. 3-4 products per collection is plenty… you don’t need dozens of options here.

Last, you can offer up-sell options. And this is where it gets fun. You can allow people to purchase extra hours of coverage, extra artwork like albums and prints, guest books, additional sessions, and so much more. The key here is - again - not to overwhelm them by throwing all this information at them at once. When you are sitting with your client the consultation and making recommendations for which collection will be the best fit, you’ll want to also recommend any add-ons that you think will be ideal for them, and offer them at that time. You can even encourage clients to add on more products between their engagement session and the wedding, or even after the wedding. Remember, the goal of a salesperson is to keep selling until the client says no. This doesn’t mean you have to harass your clients, or be a pushy salesman!! But it does mean that if you have an idea for a product or service that will fit their needs and make their life easier or better in some way, you shouldn’t hesitate to let them know and allow them to decide if that’s something they’d like to add.

How to run your wedding IPS appointment

Let’s get down to how to actually run your sale. I think that even photographers who have done IPS for portrait sales can be a little overwhelmed when it comes to selling weddings, because the number of images is so much higher. Sitting down with a gallery of 30 images is very different than a gallery of 600. So how do you manage this without overwhelming your clients?

First, let’s back up and go over some of the basics of IPS:

Set the expectation ahead of time that ordering will be done in person
Communicate thoroughly about your processes and why your methods make your clients’ lives easier and better
Show products frequently and build their desire to own what you are selling
Prepare your clients for the sale by letting them know what will take place and encouraging all decision-makers to attend
Prepare the gallery and consider preparing some wall mock-ups for your client
Consider preparing an album mock-up
Have sample products available for them to handle
Show the images, help the clients choose what they want by guiding them, take the order and collect payment

Who should attend?

One fun thing about weddings is that you often have more people who are invested in seeing the images than just the couple themselves. I absolutely love asking the couple if they would like for other family members to attend and consider purchasing some images for themselves. My favorite wedding sale included not just the couple, but both sets of parents, both sets of grandparents, a few siblings, and a bridesmaid or two. It was a whole party! We met in their home and since I knew it would be a large group I brought my projector and showed the images on the wall at a large size so everyone could see. Almost everyone there decided to purchase at least a few prints for themselves, and the parents purchased a nice selection of wall art and albums in addition to my sale to the couple. So this can end up being very lucrative and is a very efficient use of your time as well, since you’re selling to several families at once rather than trying to set up multiple meetings or sell on Zoom.

Which images should you show?

I don’t know about you, but trying to sit through a slideshow of 600 or 800 images sounds like torture to me. After a while, your eyes would glaze over and it would be impossible to even appreciate the images, much less make any decisions. So I recommend showing only 100-150 images during this appointment, sort of a “highlight reel” from the wedding day. Select the images that are most appropriate for wall art in particular, especially portraits. There’s no need to show detailed images of the food on the buffet or hundreds of photos of guests dancing… they will receive those images as part of their full digital gallery, but since those don’t make ideal wall portraits you can leave them out of this presentation. As long as clients know what to expect, they will trust you to show the images that you think are the “highlight reel” from the day and choose from those when they select their wall art.

What mockups should you prepare?

Many photographers have good success with showing pre-designed mockups of wall art, especially on the clients’ actual wall. You can ask your clients to send images of their walls before the sale, and then use a program like Photoshop or an ordering software like Fundy or N-Vu to show how the portraits will look at actual size on the wall.

You can also create a mock-up of the client’s album design using the images you think work best to tell the story of their day. This gives clients a great head start in visualizing their albums and usually they will only request a few changes to your design, which saves you tons of time compared to asking them to choose all the images themselves. Anytime we can make suggestions or prepare a mockup for them to view, we are doing them a huge service and also making our own jobs easier in the long run, so it’s worth taking a few extra minutes to do.

The Sales Session Flow

Once you actually sit down for the ordering appointment, there’s a simple 15-step flow I recommend following. You can, of course, tweak this to your own personal preference once you’ve had some experience. But if you’re new, feel free to borrow my workflow to get started.

1. Relax

2. Greet them warmly

3. Sit close

4. Let them know what to expect

5. Dim the lights and show “highlights” slideshow of 100-150 images

6. Show sample products

7. Show mock-ups

8. Determine their desires

9. Answer their pricing questions

10. Guide them through the decision-making process

11. Start to fill their order

12. Make sure they don’t forget anything

13. Finalize their order and collect payment

And that’s it! It really is that simple. This may seem like a lot to remember at first but with some practice it will really become second nature. My first sale was so incredibly nerve-wracking that I almost couldn’t complete it because my hands were shaking so badly. But after years of practice and many many successful wedding and portrait sales, I can honestly say that the IPS is my very favorite part of the process and something I would never give up. It’s the place where the whole experience culminates into the most rewarding, emotional outcome for everyone. Clients are happy, I’m in my element being able to help them, and everyone leaves happy at the end of the night. If you haven’t tried selling in person yet, I would strongly encourage you to give it a go. You have nothing to lose and a WHOLE lot to gain!

How to handle past wedding clients

When you’re ready to start IPS for your weddings, don’t forget about your previous clients. This is a great time to reach out and send them a personalized email (or better yet, call them on the phone!) and promote your new service and products. For an extra kick, include a mockup of some wall art featuring images from their wedding, or a few sample album pages. Helping them reminisce about their wedding day might bring back all the warm and fuzzy memories and get the ball rolling with a virtual sale or to set up a meeting to discuss print and product options you can provide!

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