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Discount for Friday wedding?????

Kevin CTMPKevin CTMP Registered Users Posts: 81 Big grins
edited July 22, 2010 in Weddings
I have a bride interested in having me shoot her wedding, but she wants to know if there is a discount because her wedding is on a Friday instead of Saturday.....My first reaction is to say no...reason being that just because its on a Friday, I'm still going to be doing the same amount of work, both the day of and post edit, secondly, I already offered her $200 off because she does not want the engagement portraits that I include in all of my packages. I guess one could argue that I would still have the potential to book another wedding the next day, but being that her wedding is in the first week of January, the odds of that seem slim.....Question is...what would you do :)...does anyone have any experience with this before

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    heatherfeatherheatherfeather Registered Users Posts: 2,738 Major grins
    edited July 22, 2010
    Yeah, I have had a couple clients ask me for mid week weddings... But I limit the number of weddings per week, so it doesn't matter what day of the week it happens to be.

    Also, clients that continually ask for discounts generally end up being nightmares..... it never ends. Once you cave one time, they keep asking and asking. (Just like little kids, eh?)
    Heather
    my website
    facebook
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    mmmattmmmatt Registered Users Posts: 1,347 Major grins
    edited July 22, 2010
    I openly offer a 20% discount for Friday or Sunday weddings. If someone doesn't want an e-session however they get -0- credit. that is as much for me as it is for them and is listed as a freebie in my pricing info.

    Matt
    My Smugmug site

    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
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    bnlearlebnlearle Registered Users Posts: 102 Major grins
    edited July 22, 2010
    Agree with the above. If YOU openly discount for Friday's, that's fine. But I wouldn't do it for a client I already took some off the top for. As someone else said, if you give in twice (first with the e-shoot and now with this) it's going to be par for the course for her ;)

    Bobby
    San Diego Wedding Photographer
    Come with on the Raddest Photo Trip Ever!!!
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    ian408ian408 Administrators Posts: 21,910 moderator
    edited July 22, 2010
    From the bride's perspective "you don't know unless you ask". I'd be inclined to say no to the request for the reason you've already given her a good deal of a discount.
    Moderator Journeys/Sports/Big Picture :: Need some help with dgrin?
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    Matthew SavilleMatthew Saville Registered Users, Retired Mod Posts: 3,352 Major grins
    edited July 22, 2010
    Anybody who offers a Friday / Sunday discount has clearly never shot weddings on all three days back to back. I'm very inclined to charge MORE for a wedding that bumps up against another like that. NO THANK YOU. There are 52 weeks in the year, and here in So Cal pretty much every single one of them is fair game. I know that might not be the case elsewhere, but if your market permits, I would highly advise saying NO to a discount. Trust me, you'll feel ripped off after working two (or three) back-to-back 12+ hour days, for LESS money instead of MORE.

    Any client who wants to book a SATURDAY more than 3 months in advance needs to book a full package. Clients may only book an a-la-carte package more than 3 months in advance if it is NOT a Saturday. That, to me, is more than enough of a deal. And even then, I still discourage back-to-back 12+ hour days unless I think the weddings are going to be truly style-defining for me.

    Of course, this is just a personal opinion!

    =Mat=
    “My first thought is always of light.” – Galen Rowell
    My SmugMug Portfolio • My Astro-Landscape Photo Blog • Dgrin Weddings Forum
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    smurfysmurfy Registered Users Posts: 343 Major grins
    edited July 22, 2010
    One consideration, especially for newer wedding photographers, is if you have another weekday job. If so, Friday weddings require vacation time.

    In NYC, they are more of a pain because traffic is far worse on Fridays than Saturdays. I did two of them in June, but did not discount.
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