I typed a reply to this thread last night then deleted it because I thought it might be considered inflammatory.
The new reality in photography, THE reality, is that none of us should be in the business of selling paper. My clients get proofs of every image I perfect, 250-300 4x6's in a nice album, they are representative of what they can expect if they get enlargements from a quality photo finisher. I sell from my smugmug but at prices only slightly higher than a retail photo finisher. I think the most prized, most valued albums to the client are like their weddings, highly personalized. I encourage clients to scrapbook, to hire a designer, to make a blurb book, or any combination there of. Soon after the dawn of digital photography, the cat came out of the bag on what prints actually cost, the album/book cat is scratching its way through, and it will not go back in the bag. I have NO interest in a deliverable that I am the middle man for so far as edits and style. I'm not a designer, and I have NO interest in designing. I can't conscience selling something with a 300-500% markup or padding my package with that cost and offering it as someone else's work and vision. I make sure I make my money up front, I deliver an album of proofs, a very approachable, simple, unassuming album of proofs. Have I had clients not book with me because I don't offer designed albums? you betcha. Have I been out of work those weekends? no way. I raise my prices every year on the same product, and get busier every year.
I worked for 3 years for a studio that started at 7000 dollars for coverage + $prints +$albums -digital images -LL2R (at any price). Clients who do not scoff at 7000 dollars for coverage do not scoff at 100 dollar 8x10s, they have not the desire nor the time to hire a designer, or make prints at their local photo finisher. That is FINE! But be aware, the number of THOSE clients get fewer every day, and the guys who have that market on lockdown are not retiring any time soon. For me they aren't worth the headache, not for 10,000 dollars. It may be over simplistic but your calendar very much dictates whether or not you are offering a desirable product and value.
I'm new to al this but this has been an excellent discussion. My inclinations lead me towards Matthew Saville's perspective but I'm still looking and learning.
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Matthew SavilleRegistered Users, Retired ModPosts: 3,352Major grins
I typed a reply to this thread last night then deleted it because I thought it might be considered inflammatory.
The new reality in photography, THE reality, is that none of us should be in the business of selling paper. My clients get proofs of every image I perfect, 250-300 4x6's in a nice album, they are representative of what they can expect if they get enlargements from a quality photo finisher. I sell from my smugmug but at prices only slightly higher than a retail photo finisher. I think the most prized, most valued albums to the client are like their weddings, highly personalized. I encourage clients to scrapbook, to hire a designer, to make a blurb book, or any combination there of. Soon after the dawn of digital photography, the cat came out of the bag on what prints actually cost, the album/book cat is scratching its way through, and it will not go back in the bag. I have NO interest in a deliverable that I am the middle man for so far as edits and style. I'm not a designer, and I have NO interest in designing. I can't conscience selling something with a 300-500% markup or padding my package with that cost and offering it as someone else's work and vision. I make sure I make my money up front, I deliver an album of proofs, a very approachable, simple, unassuming album of proofs. Have I had clients not book with me because I don't offer designed albums? you betcha. Have I been out of work those weekends? no way. I raise my prices every year on the same product, and get busier every year.
I worked for 3 years for a studio that started at 7000 dollars for coverage + $prints +$albums -digital images -LL2R (at any price). Clients who do not scoff at 7000 dollars for coverage do not scoff at 100 dollar 8x10s, they have not the desire nor the time to hire a designer, or make prints at their local photo finisher. That is FINE! But be aware, the number of THOSE clients get fewer every day, and the guys who have that market on lockdown are not retiring any time soon. For me they aren't worth the headache, not for 10,000 dollars. It may be over simplistic but your calendar very much dictates whether or not you are offering a desirable product and value.
I typed a reply to this reply, , and then my computer battery died and the entry wasn't saved. Suffice it to say, I agree very much that for event photography at least, back-end markups are not the way to go, people just aren't going to buy a $200 5x7 of the ring bearer picking his nose.
I do however strongly believe that "paper", or physical products in general, are still EXTREMELY important, and so that's why we find ways to still get them into client's hands. Maybe our up-front fees go up and our back-end profits go down, but we gotta make our money somehow, and we gotta get products into people's hands somehow.
But, the point I really wanted to make was just that delivering nothing but a disc is not a good business model, no matter what the client's budget is... Digital delivery is nice, and yeah now everybody knows what we pay for a 4x6 or 8x10, ...but at the end of the day you gotta figure out ways to make your business WORK...
I've been doing digital-only as my primary method since I started with wedding photography. I don't do it the right way by markup standards: It's an all-inclusive package.
Matt your words are ringing fairly true for me. A few years ago I went to a wedding photo convention with tons of speakers and demos, workshops and the like. The weekend started out with a speech by a gentleman who's name I forget but he was a known entity in the wedding photo world... may have been Jerry Ghonis... anyways, he was nearly exactly the same thought process as yourself and a big point that really stuck with me was the issue of family photos sleeping on the hard drive. I am so guilty of that ever since I got into digital cameras. Of course that is not unlike my box of photos sitting on a shelf in my basement! However, based on that I did push some paper with all of my packages and still do, but I learned basically how NOT to do it.
If you want to sell albums don't give them a set of 4x6 proofs. People were scrap booking albums from 4x6's and suddenly the custom designed album I was offering wasn't as appealing. In addition to the proofs I was giving a 24x36 4 8x12s and 4 5x7s. Here is the funny part... I have clients that are going on 2 years and have never given me their selections to print as enlargements. I have this recurring nightmare where I get 10 calls some day in November when I'm on my way out the door with my last disposable $500 to get some Christmas shopping done and all these clients want their prints! AAAAHHHHH!!!
So Matt I see your point on how not delivering any printed product is perpetuating the whole shoot and burn mentality, but the consumer has to want it! Today's consumer just doesn't see the value in the printed product like they did. I did a 50th Anniversary last year and that couple ordered tons of prints. They are from a different generation and he was a Doctor so they are probably a little different income bracket from my normal client. My wedding clients have been less interested in printed products. It has been my goal for a couple years to make an album mandatory. I just launced my new packages on my site and I deceided not to hammer the album thing home yet. I did a fairly large price bump this year and maybe next year I can take it to the next level of delivering a flush-mount to every client, but I need to see how this works with me actually getting paid for all of my time. Your offhanded comment about a 150 page blurb book is actually not a bad compromise. It would be easy and inexpensive to do a single image per page album with a custom designed cover and clients would be happier than a hand full of enlargements or box full of 4x6 prints. Ideally I would love to deliver a nice leather flush-mount to every client but I don't want to design the album for free, and I didn't feel as though I had the room in my area to add another $800 to my packages to make it worth my while. For the record, I am now just giving a $50-200 print credit with expiration after 1 year, and I bumped up my print costs slightly to soften that blow a bit... still not a ton of profit in the prints though. I sorta gave up on the prints based on simple disinterest and now hate the thought of dropping $150 on proofs that won't be displayed or otherwise used except as a means to take potential album sales from me. That was a huge mistake on my part and thankfully I only have a couple more gigs that I need to order them for. I don't really mind the countless hours I put into editing an entire wedding set as long as I am charging for that time and I feel I now finally am. As you said, I AM very concerned that someone will print or otherwise display an unedited image of mine and it will make me look bad... that is bad as far as I'm concerned! I am adamant about delivering only finished product. Starting out I certainly undervalued my time but that is part of birthing a new business... you have to do a little extra to compete. I am now at a point where I feel I can be fully compensated for my time, but I don't feel the need to force feed my philosophy on printed products to a client base that doesn't see it as I do.
...So Matt I see your point on how not delivering any printed product is perpetuating the whole shoot and burn mentality, but the consumer has to want it! Today's consumer just doesn't see the value in the printed product like they did.
...I am now at a point where I feel I can be fully compensated for my time, but I don't feel the need to force feed my philosophy on printed products to a client base that doesn't see it as I do.
Matt
I totally agree that it's a tough situation and if the entire world wants to spend the rest of their lives viewing digital versions of my images instead of physical products, who am I to stop them. LOTS of people now have massive, wall-sized TV's, computer displays, etc. and they are worshiped by this generation that is obsessed with home entertainment. That's fine with me...
But the core of the issue is to ACTUALLY GET THE WORK DISPLAYED, instead of it sleeping on a hard drive for a decade. Society as a whole needs to start changing it's ways. Maybe this means that consumers just get up off their lazy butts and make a family album on blurb every Christmas time, and just get into the habit each year... Or maybe, professional photographers also have a role to play, by "encouraging" the physical products more than the almighty disc.
Right now the disc is the holy grail, true, but it doesn't HAVE to be that way just because the client says so. Remember, we're trying to SAVE our client from accepting digital delivery and then never doing anything with their photos...
I totally agree that it's a tough situation and if the entire world wants to spend the rest of their lives viewing digital versions of my images instead of physical products, who am I to stop them. LOTS of people now have massive, wall-sized TV's, computer displays, etc. and they are worshiped by this generation that is obsessed with home entertainment. That's fine with me...
But the core of the issue is to ACTUALLY GET THE WORK DISPLAYED, instead of it sleeping on a hard drive for a decade. Society as a whole needs to start changing it's ways. Maybe this means that consumers just get up off their lazy butts and make a family album on blurb every Christmas time, and just get into the habit each year... Or maybe, professional photographers also have a role to play, by "encouraging" the physical products more than the almighty disc.
Right now the disc is the holy grail, true, but it doesn't HAVE to be that way just because the client says so. Remember, we're trying to SAVE our client from accepting digital delivery and then never doing anything with their photos...
=Matt=
I hate to jump into this and sound all confrontational, Matt, because you've brought up some really salient points and I agree with you on a number of things, but...
If society as a whole has changed, and your industry hasn't, then it's the industry who need to start adapting its business model to the demands of the market. Getting mad at the market for changing in a way which negatively impacts your business, and trying to change society as a whole back to the way things were in the past, is a short-sighted proposition at best, and is the surest way to doom a business to extinction. Meanwhile, others will fill that void by providing what the market wants.
The market now demands digital. The market now demands the files. The market now is not demanding paper or other tangible products, at least not to the extent that it did 20 years ago. The industry doesn't want to change that old, analog business model, but it is changing, slowly but surely, as new vendors enter the business and begin providing the products that the market wants, instead of providing the products that they wish they could sell.
You're concentrating on the art, and you're minimalizing the business aspect - give the consumer what they want, even if it's an inferior product, because if you don't, someone else will, and your business will evaporate. Look at the VHS-Betamax war in the early 80s for a prime example; Beta was better, but VHS won because it gave the consumer what they wanted most - longer recording time. Apple vs IBM - IBM won, because it gave the consumer what they wanted - lower price, more software titles, and more hardware choices.
If shoot and burn is what the market demands, then shoot and burn is what the market is eventually going to get; if not from those who can do it well, then from those who will do it poorly. Instead of complaining about how crappy shoot and burn is and how it's ruining the industry, I think it's smarter to figure out ways to make shoot and burn WORK, from a quality standpoint. If you do shoot and burn, but do it better than the untrained idiots who think that buying an SLR automatically makes them a photographer, then you will eventually run the idiots out of the business.
In other words, if the customer doesn't want what you have to offer, start offering them what they do want, even if it's not something you like to do. Otherwise, they'll go to someone who WILL give them what they want, even if it's somebody who does what you consider to be inferior work.
What I said when I saw the Grand Canyon for the first time: "The wide ain't wide enough and the zoom don't zoom enough!"
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Matthew SavilleRegistered Users, Retired ModPosts: 3,352Major grins
I hate to jump into this and sound all confrontational, Matt, because you've brought up some really salient points and I agree with you on a number of things, but...
If society as a whole has changed, and your industry hasn't, then it's the industry who need to start adapting its business model to the demands of the market. Getting mad at the market for changing in a way which negatively impacts your business, and trying to change society as a whole back to the way things were in the past, is a short-sighted proposition at best, and is the surest way to doom a business to extinction. Meanwhile, others will fill that void by providing what the market wants.
The market now demands digital. The market now demands the files...
...If shoot and burn is what the market demands, then shoot and burn is what the market is eventually going to get; if not from those who can do it well, then from those who will do it poorly. Instead of complaining about how crappy shoot and burn is and how it's ruining the industry, I think it's smarter to figure out ways to make shoot and burn WORK, from a quality standpoint. If you do shoot and burn, but do it better than the untrained idiots who think that buying an SLR automatically makes them a photographer, then you will eventually run the idiots out of the business.
In other words, if the customer doesn't want what you have to offer, start offering them what they do want, even if it's not something you like to do. Otherwise, they'll go to someone who WILL give them what they want, even if it's somebody who does what you consider to be inferior work.
I don't think you're being confrontational at all, in fact this is a VERY important discussion and I'm glad we're having it. I think I'm right, , but I'm glad we're having the discussion.
I personally know at least a dozen high-end professional wedding photographers who would quickly tell you that doing what the client wants is one thing, but flushing service, standards, and money down the toilet is another thing. They still have clients banging down their doors to buy albums that cost $2,000+
But that really is not my main point. My point is that ALL of society is neglecting their memories, physical OR digital.
What I lament is THIS: There's a HUGE portion of digital photographers out there who LOVE photography, but with one fatal flaw - they shoot thousands of images and then those images just disappear into the big black hole that is their HDD.
THIS is what is a shame- many people just never see their pictures again. And when a professional delivers a disc only, this syndrome is bound to kick in. THAT is what I'd like to change, if I can.
And then here's the 2nd issue: near-zero referrals. Sure, everyone has one or two clients who just OBSESS over their work, go to town and spread the word, and generate referrals left and right. But the majority of digital deliveries lead nowhere.
And this is where my personal experience comes in and cements my beliefs- In my first few years as a professional photographer, I photographed a considerable number of weddings and only ever delivered discs. And my business went nowhere. In 2007, I think it was, I bumped into a bride who had gotten married a year before. This bride's photos were some of my BEST WORK EVER, and I was super proud of that wedding even though they were quite low budget and could barely afford my shoot and burn rate. The shocker? This bride admitted to me that she had done SQUAT with her wedding photos, MY BEST WORK.
That was when the light bulb clicked on for me. I needed to do something, I had to change what my clients expect from me. I needed each client to expect something more more than just a disc.
Or, if you still believe in digital-only delivery, you a least need to work towards helping your clients do SOMETHING with their photos...
THAT, my friend, is the bottom line. The client has to do SOMETHING more than just accept a disc and toss it on a shelf or load images onto a hard drive. Both for their own posterity, and for the survival of your own business.
nd hey, maybe in 5 years all the products we deliver will be digital products. Maybe I'll be delivering iPad albums, or 40" wall displays with a slideshow. That's fine, I'll sell whatever consumers want...
All I know is that right now, my eyes hurt; I already look at enough display screens as it is. That's why I personally prefer physical representations of an image.
Comments
A former sports shooter
Follow me at: https://www.flickr.com/photos/bjurasz/
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The new reality in photography, THE reality, is that none of us should be in the business of selling paper. My clients get proofs of every image I perfect, 250-300 4x6's in a nice album, they are representative of what they can expect if they get enlargements from a quality photo finisher. I sell from my smugmug but at prices only slightly higher than a retail photo finisher. I think the most prized, most valued albums to the client are like their weddings, highly personalized. I encourage clients to scrapbook, to hire a designer, to make a blurb book, or any combination there of. Soon after the dawn of digital photography, the cat came out of the bag on what prints actually cost, the album/book cat is scratching its way through, and it will not go back in the bag. I have NO interest in a deliverable that I am the middle man for so far as edits and style. I'm not a designer, and I have NO interest in designing. I can't conscience selling something with a 300-500% markup or padding my package with that cost and offering it as someone else's work and vision. I make sure I make my money up front, I deliver an album of proofs, a very approachable, simple, unassuming album of proofs. Have I had clients not book with me because I don't offer designed albums? you betcha. Have I been out of work those weekends? no way. I raise my prices every year on the same product, and get busier every year.
I worked for 3 years for a studio that started at 7000 dollars for coverage + $prints +$albums -digital images -LL2R (at any price). Clients who do not scoff at 7000 dollars for coverage do not scoff at 100 dollar 8x10s, they have not the desire nor the time to hire a designer, or make prints at their local photo finisher. That is FINE! But be aware, the number of THOSE clients get fewer every day, and the guys who have that market on lockdown are not retiring any time soon. For me they aren't worth the headache, not for 10,000 dollars. It may be over simplistic but your calendar very much dictates whether or not you are offering a desirable product and value.
I do however strongly believe that "paper", or physical products in general, are still EXTREMELY important, and so that's why we find ways to still get them into client's hands. Maybe our up-front fees go up and our back-end profits go down, but we gotta make our money somehow, and we gotta get products into people's hands somehow.
But, the point I really wanted to make was just that delivering nothing but a disc is not a good business model, no matter what the client's budget is... Digital delivery is nice, and yeah now everybody knows what we pay for a 4x6 or 8x10, ...but at the end of the day you gotta figure out ways to make your business WORK...
=Matt=
My SmugMug Portfolio • My Astro-Landscape Photo Blog • Dgrin Weddings Forum
If you want to sell albums don't give them a set of 4x6 proofs. People were scrap booking albums from 4x6's and suddenly the custom designed album I was offering wasn't as appealing. In addition to the proofs I was giving a 24x36 4 8x12s and 4 5x7s. Here is the funny part... I have clients that are going on 2 years and have never given me their selections to print as enlargements. I have this recurring nightmare where I get 10 calls some day in November when I'm on my way out the door with my last disposable $500 to get some Christmas shopping done and all these clients want their prints! AAAAHHHHH!!!
So Matt I see your point on how not delivering any printed product is perpetuating the whole shoot and burn mentality, but the consumer has to want it! Today's consumer just doesn't see the value in the printed product like they did. I did a 50th Anniversary last year and that couple ordered tons of prints. They are from a different generation and he was a Doctor so they are probably a little different income bracket from my normal client. My wedding clients have been less interested in printed products. It has been my goal for a couple years to make an album mandatory. I just launced my new packages on my site and I deceided not to hammer the album thing home yet. I did a fairly large price bump this year and maybe next year I can take it to the next level of delivering a flush-mount to every client, but I need to see how this works with me actually getting paid for all of my time. Your offhanded comment about a 150 page blurb book is actually not a bad compromise. It would be easy and inexpensive to do a single image per page album with a custom designed cover and clients would be happier than a hand full of enlargements or box full of 4x6 prints. Ideally I would love to deliver a nice leather flush-mount to every client but I don't want to design the album for free, and I didn't feel as though I had the room in my area to add another $800 to my packages to make it worth my while. For the record, I am now just giving a $50-200 print credit with expiration after 1 year, and I bumped up my print costs slightly to soften that blow a bit... still not a ton of profit in the prints though. I sorta gave up on the prints based on simple disinterest and now hate the thought of dropping $150 on proofs that won't be displayed or otherwise used except as a means to take potential album sales from me. That was a huge mistake on my part and thankfully I only have a couple more gigs that I need to order them for. I don't really mind the countless hours I put into editing an entire wedding set as long as I am charging for that time and I feel I now finally am. As you said, I AM very concerned that someone will print or otherwise display an unedited image of mine and it will make me look bad... that is bad as far as I'm concerned! I am adamant about delivering only finished product. Starting out I certainly undervalued my time but that is part of birthing a new business... you have to do a little extra to compete. I am now at a point where I feel I can be fully compensated for my time, but I don't feel the need to force feed my philosophy on printed products to a client base that doesn't see it as I do.
Matt
Bodies: Canon 5d mkII, 5d, 40d
Lenses: 24-70 f2.8L, 70-200 f4.0L, 135 f2L, 85 f1.8, 50 1.8, 100 f2.8 macro, Tamron 28-105 f2.8
Flash: 2x 580 exII, Canon ST-E2, 2x Pocket Wizard flexTT5, and some lower end studio strobes
But the core of the issue is to ACTUALLY GET THE WORK DISPLAYED, instead of it sleeping on a hard drive for a decade. Society as a whole needs to start changing it's ways. Maybe this means that consumers just get up off their lazy butts and make a family album on blurb every Christmas time, and just get into the habit each year... Or maybe, professional photographers also have a role to play, by "encouraging" the physical products more than the almighty disc.
Right now the disc is the holy grail, true, but it doesn't HAVE to be that way just because the client says so. Remember, we're trying to SAVE our client from accepting digital delivery and then never doing anything with their photos...
=Matt=
My SmugMug Portfolio • My Astro-Landscape Photo Blog • Dgrin Weddings Forum
Bodies: Canon 5d mkII, 5d, 40d
Lenses: 24-70 f2.8L, 70-200 f4.0L, 135 f2L, 85 f1.8, 50 1.8, 100 f2.8 macro, Tamron 28-105 f2.8
Flash: 2x 580 exII, Canon ST-E2, 2x Pocket Wizard flexTT5, and some lower end studio strobes
I hate to jump into this and sound all confrontational, Matt, because you've brought up some really salient points and I agree with you on a number of things, but...
If society as a whole has changed, and your industry hasn't, then it's the industry who need to start adapting its business model to the demands of the market. Getting mad at the market for changing in a way which negatively impacts your business, and trying to change society as a whole back to the way things were in the past, is a short-sighted proposition at best, and is the surest way to doom a business to extinction. Meanwhile, others will fill that void by providing what the market wants.
The market now demands digital. The market now demands the files. The market now is not demanding paper or other tangible products, at least not to the extent that it did 20 years ago. The industry doesn't want to change that old, analog business model, but it is changing, slowly but surely, as new vendors enter the business and begin providing the products that the market wants, instead of providing the products that they wish they could sell.
You're concentrating on the art, and you're minimalizing the business aspect - give the consumer what they want, even if it's an inferior product, because if you don't, someone else will, and your business will evaporate. Look at the VHS-Betamax war in the early 80s for a prime example; Beta was better, but VHS won because it gave the consumer what they wanted most - longer recording time. Apple vs IBM - IBM won, because it gave the consumer what they wanted - lower price, more software titles, and more hardware choices.
If shoot and burn is what the market demands, then shoot and burn is what the market is eventually going to get; if not from those who can do it well, then from those who will do it poorly. Instead of complaining about how crappy shoot and burn is and how it's ruining the industry, I think it's smarter to figure out ways to make shoot and burn WORK, from a quality standpoint. If you do shoot and burn, but do it better than the untrained idiots who think that buying an SLR automatically makes them a photographer, then you will eventually run the idiots out of the business.
In other words, if the customer doesn't want what you have to offer, start offering them what they do want, even if it's not something you like to do. Otherwise, they'll go to someone who WILL give them what they want, even if it's somebody who does what you consider to be inferior work.
I personally know at least a dozen high-end professional wedding photographers who would quickly tell you that doing what the client wants is one thing, but flushing service, standards, and money down the toilet is another thing. They still have clients banging down their doors to buy albums that cost $2,000+
But that really is not my main point. My point is that ALL of society is neglecting their memories, physical OR digital.
What I lament is THIS: There's a HUGE portion of digital photographers out there who LOVE photography, but with one fatal flaw - they shoot thousands of images and then those images just disappear into the big black hole that is their HDD.
THIS is what is a shame- many people just never see their pictures again. And when a professional delivers a disc only, this syndrome is bound to kick in. THAT is what I'd like to change, if I can.
And then here's the 2nd issue: near-zero referrals. Sure, everyone has one or two clients who just OBSESS over their work, go to town and spread the word, and generate referrals left and right. But the majority of digital deliveries lead nowhere.
And this is where my personal experience comes in and cements my beliefs- In my first few years as a professional photographer, I photographed a considerable number of weddings and only ever delivered discs. And my business went nowhere. In 2007, I think it was, I bumped into a bride who had gotten married a year before. This bride's photos were some of my BEST WORK EVER, and I was super proud of that wedding even though they were quite low budget and could barely afford my shoot and burn rate. The shocker? This bride admitted to me that she had done SQUAT with her wedding photos, MY BEST WORK.
That was when the light bulb clicked on for me. I needed to do something, I had to change what my clients expect from me. I needed each client to expect something more more than just a disc.
Or, if you still believe in digital-only delivery, you a least need to work towards helping your clients do SOMETHING with their photos...
THAT, my friend, is the bottom line. The client has to do SOMETHING more than just accept a disc and toss it on a shelf or load images onto a hard drive. Both for their own posterity, and for the survival of your own business.
nd hey, maybe in 5 years all the products we deliver will be digital products. Maybe I'll be delivering iPad albums, or 40" wall displays with a slideshow. That's fine, I'll sell whatever consumers want...
All I know is that right now, my eyes hurt; I already look at enough display screens as it is. That's why I personally prefer physical representations of an image.
=Matt=
My SmugMug Portfolio • My Astro-Landscape Photo Blog • Dgrin Weddings Forum