20% of my weekends are for weddings – 10/year, max
This sweet-spot gives me work-life balance and allows me to serve couples better in three major ways:
To focus on photographing *your wedding only*: not thinking about a number of hours; not leaving for another wedding. You’re investing in me: I’m invested in you.
To retouch your photographs myself: I frankly need the control, and enjoy this part of photography too.
To be available: I walk through venues with couples in advance; photograph your rehearsal dinner the night before; Also, engagement session? Also, coffee-talk? Photo viewing? This is personal-chef service, not fast-food.
…And that work-life balance? You can imagine, if your partner works all week but you work all weekends, that is not sustainable.
Modus operandi: It’s your wedding, not my photoshoot
It is unlikely this group of humans, your families and friends, will be together in the same space again, and I know you didn’t get married to accommodate the photographer’s portfolio ambitions. (We’ll do that in the engagement session.) Plan 30 minutes after the ceremony for family and wedding-party portraits. Perhaps another ten minutes for the three of us (at sunset?) to use me as an excuse to take a moment for yourselves. (You’ve just done a big damn thing!) Use the day to celebrate, feeling the feels, let everyone know you love them. I’ll be somewhere over there [gestures wildly] documenting, unobtrusively, candidly, everything.