Booking Andrew Miller Photography - Why I make it easy to get in touch and book me.

I've just gone through about a dozen couple meetings in the past month, all of which booked me and all of which commented on why they found it easy to get information, easy to get in touch and easy to chat.

So here's some info on why I do what I do, both for couples and other wedding photographers. (Although other wedding photographers reading this may get upset!!)

• I have an online calendar. Sounds simple, doesn't it? But having this has made my life easy, especially during the lockdowns and date changes. No messing around with emails between the couple, the venue and myself. They chat to the venue with my calendar open, find a date we are both free and book it with the venue, send me a text, FB message, WhatsApp etc and done. Quick and easy.
  • Outside of lockdowns, you are busy people with lives to lead, jobs to go to, kids to look after etc. You want to know there and then if the wedding photographer of your dreams (that's me by the way) is available. You don't want to email and have to wait, you want to get it done and tick another thing from your planning guide. I don't get many emails...but the ones I do get 98% of the time we agree to work together.
• I have a lot of open, honest and authentic information on my website. You want to know as much about me as possible and as much about what I do and why I do it as possible before you get in touch.
  • Why? Because you want to make sure that the guy you are going to spend possible 16+ hours with on your wedding day isn't some weirdo who likes milk in tea and eats Hobnob biscuits. Or to put it in the words of a recent couple "You're not pretentious. You're ordinary." My website. My sense of humour. My business. My working environment.
  • Don't like the honesty? Find another wedding photographer who likens themselves to a "ninja" or a "lurker in the shadows" - there's plenty about.

• Real 100% Google Reviews. Not some copied and pasted quotes from Facebook or worse, just put onto a website with no way of checking the validity of them.
  • You can tell my reviews are real because they sound real, they sound normal, and they don't sound pretentious. They mirror exactly what I'm like in real life. I've got reviews from people whose weddings I've not even photographed at. And if you ask I can point you in the right direction of the real people that said it and to the wedding galleries, they have.
• No pushy hard sales. It doesn't work. That sales technique is so 1990s anyway. I won't take bookings after meeting you at a wedding fayre for 10 minutes for instance.
  • You are intelligent people so I treat you like intelligent people. You like what you read or what you see at a wedding fayre and you get in touch, and we meet. If you want to book fine. If you want to think about it fine. If you decide you don't want me fine. If I decide I don't want you I hope it's fine!
  • I much much prefer what I call the "transformational approach" to sales; we agree to work together.
  • I'm not just your wedding photographer. I'm part wedding planner part bridesmaid part photographer part medic part sounding board part diplomat part Jaffa Cake.

• Prices. I have them on my website.
  • Why?
    • You are busy. You don't spend hours looking at websites only to discover I'm way more than you budgeted for when you eventually get that email back from me you had to send from the contact form. If I'm close you may forego something to have me but f I'm way outside your budget you've just wasted your time and mine... but you know what, drop me an email and it may just happen ;-)
    • I don't have a page called "Prices" and then make you trawl through reams of writing only to find the "get in touch to find out more" contact form. Bloody. Annoying.
    • I don't want to answer loads of emails every week and be ghosted either; it annoys me to be ghosted. It's just rude.
    • I don't make you choose what's important in some kind of tick-box exercise.
  • Price doesn't necessarily equate to quality either like some wedding photographers suggest it does. I tick every single box on one wedding photographer's price website but I'm £650 lower than they are. And I include wedding albums. And I'm full time. And I'm better looking.
• I don't ask for information I don't need.
  • The contact form on my website (currently undergoing some changes de to website issues!) isn't going to ask you a whole load of info that I don't need or info that I will use to decide if I want you as a wedding client or not.
  • I'm not interested in your wedding budget or your wedding photography budget - that ends up being used for sending info on prices when there are no prices listed. Usually, if you say something like "£1500" then the wedding photography will magically be around the same price!
  • I'm not interested in your wedding venue unless you want to tell me. If your wedding venue is really top of the range height of summer one then the chances are the wedding photography price will increase. In short, I don't socially profile you and then give you a price based on your budget or venue.
  • I won't make you sign up to a mailing list just to give you something that should be freely available, like a price list. Then spam you with "Please book me" or "Special offer" emails.

• This is my full-time job.
  • This means I can be as flexible to meet you in person as possible. I don't need to worry about meeting only in the evenings if you work shifts.
  • My day off to photograph your wedding won't be cancelled or I won't have to take a "duvet day" to photograph your wedding.
    • Sounds like I'm having a go at part-timers? No, we all start someplace and I coach around 50 part-time/aspiring full-time wedding photographers anyway as part of my coaching and mentoring work with Business Wales.
  • What it means is if you need to meet at 7 am due to being on an early shift I can make it. Or at 10 pm due to just finishing a shift I can make it.
  • I'm flexible around you, not some other job.
• Face to Face meetings are preferred. Every. Single. Time
  • Zoom is good, but nothing beats face to face chatting to get to know each other.
  • I pretty much insist on meeting face to face every single couple before we agree to work together. If you are going to give me in excess of £1,350 and spend 16+ hours with me surely you want to meet me? Because I sure as heck want to meet you! Your wedding is my working environment, and a fun pleasant working environment is important to me.
  • Some people wait a few weeks due to our diary commitments. Others will drive a few hours to me and I to them. Or I'll make a detour from, say, Sunderland to Glasgow to meet a couple who want to book.
  • Don't want to meet me or won't wait? I'm not interested in your enquiry.
• Pre-wedding / Engagement shoots.
  • These are included purely from the perspective of getting to know you as a couple better before the wedding. I want to see you a few times if I can. I'm not going to take your money and not see you again, email you again until maybe 3 years later just before I ask for your balance.
  • Or in the case of one of my couples 5 years since they booked due to lockdowns. Imagine giving a business £1,1350 and trusting them for 5 years to still be there to photograph your wedding? That's the level of trust my couple's put in me.

• Discounts
  • Want a discount? Make sure you buy a box of Jaffa Cakes, you get 10%. It's that simple.
  • I won't magically reply to an email saying "I have a special [pre-summer / mid-winter / post-pandemic - insert as you see fit] offer on at the moment". Meaning the prices on my website are what you pay, minus the 10% discount for Jaffa Cakes.
  • Midweek wedding? Flat 15% discount, regardless of Jafa Cakes or not!
  • Oh, and I won't suddenly drop my prices by 25%, 35%, 50% etc to have a sale. I'm a wedding photographer, not DFS selling sofas.

• I limit the number of weddings I shoot...usually
  • In a normal year, I would shoot a maximum of 35 weddings. This isn't some magical number designed around keeping quality levels high, spending the maximum amount of time on your wedding or because I have a day job I need to do as well.
  • It's because I have worked out, very carefully, that if I book 35 couples at my lowest collection I will have enough turnover/profit to pay my bills and enjoy the life I want. If I book a few higher collections I shoot fewer weddings. It's that simple.
    • This is my full-time mortgage-paying job. I'm lucky enough to be financially pretty secure so don't have to charge more. I keep in line with my peers though as I think it's a bit unfair to undercut.
• No travel charges or extra unexpected expenses.
  • Again, you want one price that's it.
  • Travel & accommodation is included. This makes my life sooooo much easier as I hate admin and extra charges and having to work out 103 miles at 0.45p per mile each way and add it all together to my base price etc etc.
• Contracts & Invoices
  • My contract will have exactly what you are getting, how much it costs and what / when you need to pay. The price is fixed.
  • The invoices are there so you know exactly what you have paid (you can log into the system and check) and what balance is left.

And whilst I'm at this I make sure that I'm GDPR / Data Protection Act / Cookie / Privacy compliant as well.