AboutJohn Wilson Expertise Over 27 years specializing exclusively in professional wedding photography. I can answer most questions relating directly to wedding photography concerning the business, film, digital, traditional & digital labs, marketing, effects, pricing & packaging, shooting outdoors and in-studio with multiple flash, color management and creating magazine style wedding albums. I can't answer questions regarding other fields of photography.
Experience Over 27 years experience photographing weddings professionally. Past 4 years shooting digital exclusively.
Organizations Better Business Bureau.
Education/Credentials Going to photography seminars and reading all the wedding photography books I can find then applying the techniques and new styles I've learned with each wedding. You always need to grow and learn to keep up in this field. With each new wedding you photograph, you must challenge yourself to do better work than your previous wedding. You must always have the goal of making the wedding photographs for a bride & groom be the best photographs they have seen of any wedding.
I read your previous post about nonrefundable wedding photography deposits. Are you saying it is illegal for a wedding photographer to collect a nonrefundable reservation deposit and for deposits paid towards albums which MUST be purchased (I keep all the high resolution JPEGs and do not provide a copyright release) cannot be legally nonrefundable? My customers must purchase an album or pay in advance for albums so they receive a tangible product from me. Why shouldn't I make payments for albums nonrefundable and have the legal right to do so?
Here is a current excerpt from my website about this:
"Question: Why do you have a nonrefundable retainer fee to reserve the wedding date and time?
Answer: Most all established professional photographers have a non-refundable reservation retainer. This provides compensation to the photographer for the loss of income the photographer would have received from another wedding date which could have been retained by another customer for a wedding not cancelled. So only the fees paid to reserve us for the wedding date and time are kept as liquidated damages if the wedding is cancelled for any reason. (Legal Foundation: A true retainer "is not a payment for services, it is an advance fee to secure services, and remunerate photographers for loss of the opportunity to accept other employment." If the photographer can substantiate that other employment will probably be lost by obligating himself to photograph a client's wedding on a certain date, then the retainer fee should be deemed earned at the moment it is received. On the other hand, if a fee is not paid to compensate the photographer for lost opportunities and not to secure the photographer's availability, then it is merely a prepayment for services and/or products and not a true retainer).
In order for photographers to legally protect the nonrefundable retainer fee on their contract, the exact amount of the nonrefundable retainer fee MUST be itemized. If this is not done, a court can find on behalf of the consumer that those deposits ARE refundable.
On our wedding contract, the customer has the option of paying an "advance fee" for services or products. But this is not required. When the customer pays an advance fee for future services/products, then those payments are refundable by law. We are required by law to refund money not earned because payments in advance for services/products not rendered must be refunded. For these reasons, it is important that our customers understand that all payments which are non-refundable retainer fees are simply for the purpose of reserving the specified wedding date and time on the contract.
Clients may choose to order a wedding album or any other photo products on OUR wedding contract (to lock in a price for example) and pay the advance fee AND that money is refundable. All sales tax paid is always refundable with a cancelled contract. All money paid towards the engagement session, bridal portrait session, any video coverage and framed signature mat are refundable until shot or non-refundable if already in production and, of course, if it has already been delivered to you. We recommend not putting any of these items on the contract and simply purchase the desired item if and when you want to."
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Here is what I'm saying. If you have a wedding contract which states that your nonrefundable retainer paid to retain you for a certain date and time is $XXXX.XX, that money is the only money you have the legal right to keep as nonrefundable. That money is considered EARNED immediately upon receipt by law. Any other deposits you collect on that contract (including sales taxes on future products to be SOLD) are refundable by law. Why? Simply because the money you collected for those products is an order for a product you have not yet rendered. The product, in this case, albums, are NOT SOLD until you deliver them. If your client cancels the contract before the wedding and takes you to court, the judge will point out that the contract states your nonrefundable retainer paid to retain you is in fact nonrefundable. You get to keep that. But advance fees paid to place an order for wedding albums is refundable as well as the sales taxes you collected on the "sell" of those products. Did you sell the albums or not? If you did, then you collected sales tax and hopefully turned that in to the state. If you didn't and if you didn't give the customer the album they paid you in advance for, you are guilty of theft and sales tax fraud.
Another way of looking at this. How can you even sell an album in advance when something could happen to keep you from even photographing the wedding day? It could be completely YOUR FAULT that you will NOT be able to deliver the album they paid you in advance for. I'm sure you would decide that the right thing to do would be giving them a full refund not only for the album but for the entire contract in this case. But this reveals a simple point. If something happens that the customer cannot have the wedding day, they are still left paying you $XXXX.XX retainer fee for the date and time. Then, on top of that, you also want to keep all the money they paid in advance for wedding albums and sales tax? Also consider this. If you give them back the sales tax for the albums, you are admitting you did not make the album sell. If you didn't make the album sell, then why are you keeping the money they paid for albums? Well, it's probably because you want to consider their cancellation of the contract as "liquidated damages". But here's the clincher. THAT IS THE PURPOSE OF YOUR NONREFUNDABLE RETAINER FEE FOR THE DATE AND TIME! If your customer cancels the contract, you get to keep your nonrefundable retainer fee for the date and time AS YOUR LIQUIDATED DAMAGES. Accepting orders and advance payments for wedding albums and NOT delivering them for ANY REASON and keeping those deposits is illegal. It is theft and can also be sales tax fraud.
Why not make life simpler for yourself and your clients. Don't require them to pay any money at all towards a wedding album(s) until after the wedding day? Since you keep the high resolution images and don't provide a copyright release, they will have to go back to you anyway and pay the extra money in order to get pictures and any other products from you. But you are worried they may cancel the contract before the wedding? Then make sure your nonrefundable retainer fee appropriately compensates you in case this happens!
