Do you make sure your clients fill in a wedding photography questionnaire before shooting their big day? Are you asking you right questions to make your job as wedding photographer as easy and efficient as possible?
Wedding questionnaires are one of the most important things to have in place as a photographer.
Apart from providing you with you all the essential information, they also help to prepare the bride and groom for what’s to come.
During my 6+ years as a wedding photographer, I’ve updated the questionnaire I send to my couples numerous times.
Now, I’m confident that I have it to the point where I have all the information I need for before, during and even after the wedding.
What Questions to Ask?
Are you asking the right questions to your clients?
Unless you’ve shot a decent number of weddings, you won’t have a good idea of the questions you need to be asking in your client questionnaire.
I’m not talking about the generic ‘Personal details + wedding day timings’ type questionnaire here, either…
You need something much more in depth, without being too overwhelming for your clients.
You need to have all the main timeline details in case the client doesn’t have an official run sheet.
You should also have some information about the VIPs – bridal party, parents, etc – so you can start getting familiar with names, even before you’ve seen faces.
You may even want to know details about the vendors, to help you with blog posts and social media promotion after the wedding, saving the inevitable back and forth emails.
Then there’s the random info we often ignore, but can prove useful – Instagram tags, address for album delivery, family sore points (divorced partners, etc.), first dance song (for you to gauge tempo, for lighting, position, etc.), etc etc.
Incidentally, I use a client management software called Studio Ninja which handles the questionnaire, contract, invoice and all the other important info for me – if you’re not using a CMS already, I highly recommend it.
Investing in a few wedding photography related tools can be a massive time saver for running your business, and makes perfect sense when you consider them to be tax deductible business expenses to help maximise your salary.
However, if you’re not at that stage yet, here’s a free template to start you off…
FREE Wedding Questionnaire Template
To save you the time of thinking up all the questions you should be asking your wedding clients, I’ve decided to give away the exact template I’ve been using with success in my own business.
A comprehensive free wedding questionnaire to use as a template as a starting point is something I wish existed when I first started shooting weddings.
Obviously, the weddings you shoot in your country may be different to the ones I shoot here in Australia, so you’ll need to tailor the questionnaire for your own circumstances.
I recommend that you use this free sample questionnaire as a starting point for your own questions, adding and removing things that are/aren’t relevant to you.
To get hold of the free template, just enter your details below:
(If you don’t use social media but still want to gain access to the questionnaire, just sign up to the free Shotkit newsletter here and you’ll find it in the Member’s Area.)
I hope you find the wedding questionnaire useful! Leave me a comment if you have any other tips ;-)
Check out the 11 essential tools and apps every wedding photographer should be using this year.
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Mark Condon is a British wedding photographer and editor of Shotkit. When he’s not taking photos or reviewing the latest camera gear and software, Mark can be found cycling around the northern rivers.
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