It’s time to start preparing for wedding season. Can you imagine what it would feel like to have an inbox full of inquiries from dream clients? In today’s episode, we are chatting about what to do to prepare for WHEN this happens! I’m breaking down five easy steps to help prepare your business for your busiest and most profitable wedding season yet!

On Quianna Marie Weekly, we’re chatting about business growing pains, finding genuine connections, and celebrating wins of all sizes through the lens of a photographer at heart. Sprinkled throughout stories and interviews with past clients, photographers and other business owners this podcast is designed to help you step into your purpose and to truly create a life you’re proud of, a life worth photographing and sharing.

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Today’s episode is brought to you by the FREE Book More Weddings guide. Learn how to easily capture behind the scenes video for organic referrals, local followers, and increased brand awareness. You want to make sure you have this before your next wedding! 

Review the Show Notes: 

Content Creation (3:42)

Workflow And Systems (4:35)

Prioritizing Your Health (6:31)

Map Out Your Calendar (7:39)

Connect With Vendors (9:34)

Mentioned In This Episode:

Book More Weddings Guide

Amplify Your Weddings Series 

Try Honeybook with 50% Off!

Episode 032: Creating Reels + TikToks to Amplify Your Weddings

Episode 041: Creating Workflows + Systems to Amplify Your Weddings with Laura Murphy 

Review the Transcript:

I want you to imagine that your dream couple just reached out to you. And this is what their email said. Hey there, it’s official and we’re finally engaged. Before we book our venue and start finalizing some vendor details, we wanted to reach out to learn more about your pricing and confirm your availability before we pick our date, or thinking about a date for next spring. But I don’t want to lock anything down until we hear from you.

After watching you photograph my cousin Ashley’s wedding, there is no doubt that you would be our photographer. We love your dog and can’t wait to hear back to chat more about booking details. There literally isn’t anyone else we would consider capturing our wedding experience, it would be an honor to even be considered to be one of your clients. When we’re not working. We both love to travel and joy adventures and checking out new breweries.

Our first date was at the adorable brewery near the beach. So we’re thinking of grabbing a beer and toasting to our engagement before we head down to the water for our engagement photos. Your style of photography is what I have been dreaming up and I seriously just want to be your best friend. I know my fiance will love you too. Please let us know if you have any open dates for April and May of next year. Can’t wait to connect and learn more. Thank you for your time and consideration. Okay, I want that to sink in for a second.

Do you dream of having an inbox full of inquiries like this? Imagine opening emails to have raving fans of dream couples, just hoping and praying to work with you. Reaching out to book and not even booking their venue until you’re available is goals beyond goals for any wedding vendor.

So what’s the secret?

How do you not only create those experiences in real life, but then keep repeating them for raving clients and genuine referrals? I know we spend a lot of time dreaming and creating content for our dream clients. But let me ask you this. If your dream client reached out today, with no budget, eager to work with you, are you capable of giving them an unforgettable experience?

Do you have systems in place to help their wedding experience run smoothly? Are you their dream photographer? Not just a person but as a legit business? I challenge you to write an email to yourself just like the email I kicked off this episode with to start dreaming about and manifesting those emails to slide into your inbox. Then for today’s episode, we’ll chat about what to do next.

Welcome to Quianna Marie weekly, a podcast for creatives who love to celebrate wins big or small by dancing in the kitchen photographers who are excited to serve their clients and friends who are ready to chase really, really big dreams.

You can find all of the resources mentioned in this episode at quiannamarie.com/podcast. Join me as I share weekly motivation, chat about growing pains, finding genuine connections and celebrating your wins through the lens of a photographer at heart. Come join me for a dance party. Ready love though.

This episode is brought to you by the free guide book more weddings your guide for capturing behind the scenes at your next wedding to book more easy referrals, check out the show notes or click the link in my Instagram bio to grab yours today. Make sure you have it before your next wedding. Okay, so back to preparing for our next wedding season. Personally, I believe it’s important to keep preparing throughout the year. There’s always blog posts to write websites update content to create and literally a million things to do.

BOOK MORE WEDDINGS – Your FREE guide to grab before your next wedding!

Where to start and where should be putting our efforts? Today I’m going to be breaking down five super easy steps to help you prepare for a busy and profitable wedding season.

HOW WEDDING PHOTOGRAPHERS CAN PREPARE FOR WEDDING SEASON

1 – Content Creation

Number one, content creation, you’re going to want to feel a bit annoying with the amount of content you’ll be creating these days. And that’s totally normal. I challenge you to stop scrolling social media and become a producer instead of a consumer. You already have a bank of beautiful wedding galleries. So put those to work, create commercials for your business, showcase your daily life and bring people into your world to help them see themselves in your work and your mission. This is a time to post and build that brand awareness. Just as we’re seeing a ton of engagement rings glowing on social media. Those couples should also be seeing your work too.

They’re not going to be seen anything. If you’re not posting check out episode number 32 Creating reels and tic TOCs to help you get started. Let’s see those posts baby I cannot wait to see all of your creativity. Let’s just get it online.

2 – Workflows and Systems

Number two workflows and systems. After we do a happy dance, many of us would literally melt and maybe even start freaking out after we read that email from a dream couple. The dance party may still be going on when we realize we have a ton of work to do to complete the booking process and onward those dream clients. I want you to confidently feel prepared before you start getting those emails so you can make fast decisions for you have business and your best interest without feeling stressed in episode number 41, creating workflows and systems with Laura Murphy is a great chat to add to your playlist.

How are you accepting payments? Are you sending an experience magazine? Or a gift? Once a book? Do you have your updated pricing guide? I mean, you guys, it’s 2023. If we’re rolling out pricing from 2020.

Still, it’s time for an update. And I’m not pointing any fingers. How many emails are you sending before they confirm their engagement session? Do you have an onboarding questionnaire to complete once they book with you, all of this is done for me in honey book. So it’s important to polish this process. Before we even start booking weddings, I want you to be prepared and anticipate them coming as if they’re already here in your inbox. Let’s get to building those workflows and systems.

My bestie Laura is truly a wizard when it comes to creating these bullet proof systems that will turn your weekday from I don’t know if she has a crazy number like from a 30 to 45 hour work week, into a five hour work week, because she’s putting the work in and uploading up front. So you can easily just send off email reminders, send off little checkmarks it just makes life so much easier.

Plus, like I’ve mentioned a million times before on the podcast, it just creates that legitness it turns your business going from a shaky kind of hobby photographer into a full blown professional that can absolutely increase their pricing and make it a huge value that these couples are looking to invest in.

3 – Prioritize Your Health

Yes, it’s true. Are you drinking enough water babe? Are you getting outside to exercise and enjoy the sunshine? Working a wedding day can feel like a marathon and I would love for you to feel fulfilled and maybe a little tired at the end of the long wedding day. Instead of having a massive wedding hangover completely sober the day after your next wedding. I’m not even joking when I say it’s important to start walking now.

Get your steps in build your endurance and eat to nourish your body as best as you can. This is totally a big sister nudge from me over here, but it’s true. This even goes for non shooting days, get up and walk around, take your dog for walks and go on adventures. Not only does it help you keep feeling strong and mentally healthy. But movement always encourages creativity. Anytime I’m in a rut or feeling like super blah.

Getting outdoors and in nature or exercising always helps me. So this is your big sister push to say get outside and do things that challenge your mind get a little sweaty and get healthy, like this is the time that we should be conditioning for our busy busy wedding season.

4 – Map Out Your Calendar

Number four, map out your calendar. This is so important because you’re going to want to know as these really, really, really hot leads are just going to be leaning into your inbox. You’re gonna want to know when you’re available, check out your calendar, do you have a niece or nephew coming soon. And I say this because my brother and sister in law are expecting my very, very first nephew. And I’m really excited about that. So I know for myself, I’m literally taking off a good three weeks in May like I’m not even booking anything coming up soon. And so that’s something that I’ve worked really hard to be able to kind of create these little mini sabbaticals for my life.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m still gonna be working. But I can look at that calendar day. And as wedding inquiries come in, I can say no, sorry, like I don’t really off.

So that goes for you looking at the entire year, figuring out exactly how many weddings you want to book and how many you are willing to book and I feel like those are two very different answers. If you’ve been a wedding photographer a long time, I feel like we have like our max. And then we have our like, no, really we’re done max number. And I want you to get there, I actually want you to either bring on an associate team or potentially bless other photographers in your area that you love that you would be happy to share those referrals because you’re fully booked.

Right? So map out those dates now. So the communication is clear and precise. And you’re not wishy washy, or oh my gosh, God forbid overbooking or double booking yourself. Don’t let that happen to you. Honestly, since I have been using HoneyBook, that has never been an issue. It’s always been marked off and crossed off. And I’ve been really safe with those bookings. But now’s your time to truly step into your power.

This is why we have our business right? Don’t let your business take over your life. Prioritize your life and your your home life, your family and all the things that bring you joy first, and then we fill in the cracks with our business.

5 – Connect With Vendors

Okay. Number five, connect with vendors.

If you can’t meet up in person, which I highly recommend, I’d love to challenge you to cross promote each other by going live on social media. I have this this series and I did this I think maybe two or three years ago and I did it online. And I called it timeline week. And this was so fun because I reached out to five. Actually, it might have been more than that. Oh, maybe it was seven it was a full week. But I reached out out to a handful of wedding vendors, past brides and venues that I interviewed. And I just popped on on Instagram and we chatted about building up the perfect timeline.

What was great is because like I interviewed Kim Baker who is a hair and makeup stylists, I interviewed the dancing cowboy who’s one of my best friends who is a really awesome local DJ in like the San Jose Los Gatos area. And he’s also coming out here to Arizona, which is so great. And so of course, we chatted about reception timelines and what it looks like for your dance, dancing in the evening for wedding day, right, like so all these things were very specific to Timeline related things, but with the vendors highlight, right, so like steal that idea.

Honestly do it, maybe you are going to actually have full on live conversations with these vendors. Or maybe you just send them a couple questions, interview them, and boom, you have a whole Instagram series, you have a whole blog series like juicy how my brain just goes like you can have so many ideas from one tiny piece of content. This next tip sort of goes in like the content creation umbrella, but consider making digital or print ads for your favorite vendors.

So maybe going live is just not your thing. And I can push you as this big sister and cheerleader as much as I can. But if you’re not feeling it, like don’t do it, okay, grab a handful of images from one wedding or multiple weddings and highlight the florist, the venue or the makeup team. There’ll be so grateful and excited to share online. The name of the game for this one is just to boost organic referrals. Okay, and I want you to think about that for a second.

Okay, so let’s say I want you to imagine kind of like an old school flyer where or like a postcard postcard is perfect. So imagine you have a postcard. And it could be digital or like real piece of paper. And on that postcard you have a collage of the makeup artists that you love.

So for example, I love working with Kim Baker, she’s in California Bay Area. And of course, she’s open to travel too. But she’s just so so incredible. And if I had a little postcard of images all about her, right, it was like working with Kim Baker. And actually I would just let the images speak for themselves. And then I would in the corner, right, you know, in like smaller font, her business name, and then literally a little blurb that says images by Quianna Marie or obviously insert your name, right?

That right there is gold. And that can be shared on social media, on your vendor referrals as couples come in, and they’re looking for favorite vendors that you love to work with. There’s just so many opportunities with that. And like, I wanted to mention that, like you’re doing this for them with the emphasis on them and their business. And then they’ll be so eager and grateful to share. And just kind of taking that a step further. Like I think this is a full circle moment. The more you show up for your dream clients, the more content you’ll be creating.

So when a dream client stumbles across your work, either in person or online, do they come through through you through a hashtag, or they’re looking up a specific venue? This is where the magic happens. And that’s where they say, Oh, wow, like who took these photos? Or where is this located. And then you have this just bucket of resources for them to contact you to learn from you and to truly feel like they know you already before they reach out. Work on becoming the dream photographer today. So when your dream clients reach out, it’s a no brainer.

They’re already sold and ready to invest in you. I have an entire series on the podcast called amplify your weddings. If you miss that, or you’re just joining the party now. Hello, I’m so happy you’re here. Scroll on back to episode number 24 through 49. Yes, that’s a whole bunch and they’re all packed with juicy tips and action items to help your wedding photography business thrive. I am always cheering for you babe. Don’t forget to grab that free guide book more weddings before your next wedding. This is so important. Okay, I really want you to feel prepared, feel confident.

So that way you can be a content generating machine at your next wedding to book more genuine referrals. It’s just gonna come easy. And I want those those emails coming straight to your inbox and it’s possible. It’s absolutely possible for you, babe. All right. I hope you have a beautiful day.

Keep on dancing. I love you so much.

That’s a wrap on another episode of Quianna Marie Weekly. Thank you so much for your listenership and support. You can find the resources and show notes for this episode and more at quiannamarie.com/podcast. I’d be honored if you’d show your support by leaving a review and rating on your favorite podcast app. Until next time, keep on dancing.