These are example terms. Replace them with your own before you go live. They are written to show the shape of a real agreement and are not legal advice.
Booking
A date is held by a signed agreement and a booking fee of one quarter of the collection price. Until both are in place the date stays available to anyone else who asks.
The balance is due one month before the wedding. There is no charge for paying it in instalments before then.
If plans change
The booking fee is non-refundable, because holding a Saturday means turning down every other enquiry for it.
If you move the date, I will move with you where I am free, and the booking fee moves with the booking. If I am not free on the new date, I will help you find someone whose work I would trust with my own family.
If you cancel more than six months out, nothing further is owed. Inside six months, half the balance is due; inside one month, all of it.
If I cannot be there
In twelve years it has not happened, and there is a plan anyway. In case of illness, accident or a genuine emergency I will find a replacement photographer of equivalent standard, at my own cost, and edit their work myself so the gallery still looks like mine.
If no replacement can be found, everything you have paid is refunded in full within seven days.
Copyright and what you can do with the photographs
Copyright remains with the photographer, which is the standard position and the one that lets me keep a portfolio.
You receive an unlimited personal licence: print them, frame them, put them on the wall, send them to everyone you know, post them anywhere you like. There is no time limit and no print release to chase.
The one thing the licence does not cover is commercial use — a brand or a business using your wedding photographs to sell something. Ask, and it is usually a yes.
Please do not crop or filter the photographs before posting them. A credit is appreciated and never required.
On the day
I will be there for the hours in your collection, and I do not stop early because a schedule slipped. Where a meal is being served, one for me is appreciated — it is the only time I sit down.
I cannot photograph what I am not allowed to photograph. Some churches and registrars restrict where I can stand or forbid pictures during the ceremony itself; where that happens I will tell you beforehand and work around it.
Delivery
A handful of previews within a few days. The full edited gallery within six weeks, and usually sooner.
Every frame is culled and edited by me. You will not receive the unedited files: the ones I remove are the ones where somebody blinked, and the edit is most of the work you are paying for.
Complaints
Tell me. I would far rather fix something than have you live with it.