Sample Wedding Contract / Terms

try joining a photography assosication. There are memebership fees but they do provide examples of contracts and usage of all their contracts as well. Not sure where you are from but in Aus there are two major associations 1 -AMCP 2 -AIPP - Hope that helps your search! Nic :-)

I disagree about joining a "club", not if your just starting. I have seem this question posted many time do a search in the photo.net You will find many contract you can copy and change to your needs. You are bound to get lots of post about you need a lawyer to do it. Yea well maybe later on down the road but for now serach the site.

I can email you a copy o fthe one I use if you like. medinaphoto1@msn.com

I did have mine done by an attorney. I don't like to take chances was burned before in business.

I got a sample by googling wedding contract. The first hit has a pretty decent example. I changed a few lines, removed one, and added one to meet my specific needs.

Are there any resources for a sample wedding contract or what to include? I'm more interested in the legal-ese and other terms, and not the package details.

Answer: Get a book like Business and Legal Forms for Photographers by Tad Crawford. It will contain all you need in the way of legal forms to start complete with an explanation of the legalese.

I usually ask for a reasonable deposit and then payment is due a week before the wedding day.

Donﾒt ask for a deposit they are (by law) refundable, ask for a retainer it is not. What is the difference? A retainer is payment for the service of reserving a specific time, place, etc. A deposit is made to pay for a specific good or service, therefore if you don't perform you must refund.

Also, I give clients rights to the images for anything but commercial use or sale. I'd also like to be able to sell prints to guests, but wonder if giving the B&G the digital images eliminates that possibility.

Ya Think? I see this so often. It is a practice I totally disagree with. Why are you giving away your hard work? Wedding photography takes skill, education, practice, equipment, etc.. See the post from yesterday on what we do besides "click." If you give a B/G a copy of your high rez digital images you are in effect giving MONEY away. Look at it like this, if you were the author of a book would you give thousands of copies away and tell people "as long as you don't sell them" you can make as many copies as you want? Of course not. So why do you do it with wedding photos?

Should there be a clause that disallows them giving away images? In fraud auditing there is a principle called the 10-80-10 rule. 10 percent of all people will never commit fraud, 80 percent will if circumstances arise, or through circumstances that they don't perceive as wrong (i.e. He gave me the high rez images that must mean they are mine) and the last 10% will commit it intentionally. Your Idea will work as long as you only do wedding photography for the first 10%.

What about my rights to use the images? I haven't been asking for a commercial release. I mostly will only use the images for self promotion and portfolio use. But what if I get a great image that could be used for stock or some other potential commercial/editorial licensing? Anybody put those terms in their contract?

Be careful here, your rights are exactly what you write in the contract and only for the B/G. Self promotion clauses are normal, full out model releases are not. Remember if you use photos other than the b/g you need a model release from them as well.

I know this stuff largely depends on how each of us decide to run our individual businesses, but I'm just interested in some opinions.

I donﾒt say any of this to be mean but more often I see the transparent nature of information and thus people devaluing it. As for the legal stuff if you end up in arbitration, court or talking to bridezilla you will find that, no , actually the leagal stuff is quite standard. If you didnﾒt put it in writing you are almost always, as a professional party, responsible for it.

Hope this helps;-)

"You are bound to get lots of post about you need a lawyer to do it. Yea well maybe later on down the road but for now serach the site."

Do you tell people not to buy insurance for important things until its late as well?

Just remember - it's YOUR contract. So, if a dispute arises, any discrepancy will be held against YOU. So, be careful. That said, I haven't had mine looked at by a lawyer (although I've done lots of contract work in past history, so I have some basic understanding).

I'd just look all across the internet, find as many as you can, and use the good ideas. You'll probably find things that didn't occur to you (yet).

IMHO, MOST important is the 'non performance' clause. Like, if you get sick the day before the wedding, you don't want to get sued to pay for their entire wedding 'redo' to take pictures.

As far as selling prints, you can just add a 'Any distrubution to any other party, via electronically or via printed media will be a violation of Photographers contract.' Then, if they do (and you can figure it out), you could sue for damages for breach of contract(hard, I think).

Good luck!

pat