Every wedding is a chance to meet potential clients; an audition if you will. You are NOT just there to serve your current bride and groom, you are there to give EVERYONE a positive experience that they will not only remember, but TALK about with their friends. Your bride and groom at each wedding are not just “another wedding date.” They are and SHOULD be treated as a part of your family….your wedding family.

When you are shooting a wedding, self promotion should never be a top priority, but it is smart to be aware that while you are watching your bride and groom, guests are watching you. We as photographers usually stick out….dressed in all black, walking around while others are sitting, shinning bright lights in peoples faces with our flashes….we are HARD to miss. And that is okay, as long as you are conscious that your every action is be recorded in guests minds….they evaluate your presence and it affects the overall experience of a wedding day. I don’t say this to make you even more stressed or nervous on wedding day, but for a girl whose business is run SOLELY on positive word of mouth, it is something I naturally pay attention to.

In the beginning, I would hand out STACKS of my business cards to guests and I even went as far as to say….”DO YOU MIND PASSING THESE OUT?!” (FACEPALM!) Then I switched it up and started fanning the business cards out on top of the bar….around centerpieces at tables, and all throughout the girls bathrooms! (Again, FACEPALM) What a disaster. I can only imagine NOW looking back what that must have looked like to not only the guests, BUT MY POOR bride and groom. Though it was NOT my intention, my actions said ‘ I was there to book more weddings and not shoot/care about theirs anymore’. HORRIBLE!

My printing lab (PICTAGE) came out with this marketing product called “Event Cards” roughly 2 years ago, maybe less. I used them here and there last year, but never thought of them as VITAL to my business….a go with or without type of product. But towards the end of last year, I used them the MOST frequently, and booked 3 weddings as a direct result of them!

This is how it works:

You take an image from your clients engagement session, put it into a desired FREE template (there are nearly 20, here are a few options they offer as Photoshop files below), and update the text to reflect your bride and groom and their wedding day information.

Once you do so, you can customized them a little more…..like these ones of my couples below:

(Can print as 2×3 wallet images in color or black and white….vertical or horizontal options- no minimum amount has to be ordered, you can order just one as a sample if you would like)

As you will notice, I have added their names, wedding date and INSTRUCTIONS for the guests as to WHERE they can see sneak peaks on my facebook page…where they can see the bride and grooms custom site I make for them and their wedding AND their PERSONAL PASS gallery that will HOST the same day slide show images I feature at the wedding within 48 hours after the wedding! What this means is that, they take this card home the night of the wedding, girls and guys empty their purses and wallets/pockets only to find my card before sending their clothes to the dry cleaners, hop on to the PASS website above and IMMEDIATELY can access images from a wedding they attended less than 2 days ago and from there…can start sharing and downloading those same images to SOCIAL MEDIA so even MORE of their friends and family can see!

No longer are they throwing away my business cards in the trash…letting them get sticky with spilt coke on their car floor boards, or throwing them in the bottomless pit of a car center console. THEY are looking at a picture of their friends and family with information right on it…NOT promoting me….BUT promoting my clients…their friends…their family!

Linking them to my Facebook so they can be the first to see sneak peeks has been amazing. It ups the traffic to my page, the “likes” and the chance for them to follow my work, get to know me, and hopefully remember me when its time for THEIR big days! See how it all comes full circle. My brides are happy I am not pimping my self out at their wedding, I am happy I didnt choose that tacky route, and I am thrilled for the organic relationships its formulates.

A 3 minute photoshop template helped me book 3 weddings last year and I can only hope a whole year of using them this year will allow me the honor of meeting and adding new members to the KNP Wedding Family.

As always…if you have any questions, I am here to help! : )

xoxo, Kaitlin Noel