The year is twelve weekends.Protect every inquiry.
A season is twenty, maybe thirty Saturdays, and one lost wedding is about 7% of the year. The inquiries that decide it arrive nine months early, as DMs and contact-form emails, and half of them never get a second message. This is the setup that puts every enquiry into a pipeline with a date on it, answers “are you free on 12 June and how much?” for €25 in writing within three days, books the engagement shoot from your bio, and tells the list what to plan and when, all year.
Free to start. You keep 80%. The inquiry form and the CRM cost nothing to run.
You'll hear back within two working days · no payment, no obligation
The inquiry form
that becomes a pipeline.
Date, venue and guest count, the coverage they imagine, a budget band, and how they found you. Five fields. Every submission is a contact tagged by wedding month, and the pipeline is the list of Saturdays: inquiry → date checked → quote sent → retainer paid → booked. You can see in one screen that June has two dates left and October is wide open, and email the planner segment when a cancellation frees a Saturday.
How Leads & CRM worksA written quote and
a schedule, not a “non-refundable”.
For couples who want the answer before a call, the €25 date check gets this: whether the date is free, the package and price, the retainer that holds it, and the cancellation schedule stepped by how far out they cancel. That last part matters. A schedule tied to what you actually lose holds up far better than a flat forfeit when a bank asks. The €25 comes off the retainer; if the date is taken, you say so in a line and the fee refunds itself.
€20 to your balance · pipeline: date checked → quote sent
Four products,
switched on in this order.
The pipeline first, because it costs nothing and the season depends on it. Then the paid date check for the couples who want an answer in writing, the engagement shoot in the calendar, and a letter that keeps couples and planners reading for the fourteen months between booking and the day.
- 1Day one · Leads & CRM
Inquiry → quote → retainer pipeline free
Five fields: date and venue, coverage, budget band, how they found you. Contacts tagged by wedding month and by planner. Stages: inquiry → date checked → quote sent → retainer paid → booked → delivered. Email a segment when a date frees up.
- 2Day one · Forms & Requests
Check my date + quote €25 · 3 days
Date, venue, guest count, hours wanted. Your written yes-or-no with the package, price, retainer and cancellation schedule is the answer; the €25 is credited to the retainer. No reply in three days, automatic refund. Cap it at ten a week in booking season.
- 3Week two · Bookings
Engagement shoot / consult €150
Two session types in one calendar: a 90-minute engagement shoot and a 30-minute planning call. Golden-hour slots only on the shoot, Google Calendar synced, reminders at 48 h and the morning of. Credited to the package for couples who book the day.
- 4Week four · Newsletter
Planning timeline series free
Monthly. What to sort out this many months out, one real wedding and what the light did, a vendor you trust, the dates still open. The agent drafts it from your galleries and calendar; you edit and send.
Nine months out — the four things to lock before Christmas
Photographer, venue and planner should be under retainer by now. Next: the timeline draft, the second-shooter decision, and whether you want a first look.
Kartzow, September, 90 guests. Ceremony at 15:00 put the portraits in hard light, so we moved them to 19:20 and did family photos before dinner instead. Six frames, with the light explained.
Studio Nord for planning at 80+ guests. They send me the timeline three weeks out, which is why their weddings run on time.
May 22, June 5, July 17, August 28, September 11, October 2. Retainers confirm; enquiries don't. Check a date for €25 and get the quote in writing.
Autumn golden hour is 17:40 this month. Four Thursday slots left in October, €150, credited to your package if you book the day.
What the monthly letter
actually contains.
One planning block pinned to a distance from the day, one real wedding with the light explained, one vendor, the open dates, the engagement-shoot slots. Five blocks, monthly, all free. Couples read it because they are planning; planners read it because you name them. Both are where next season's Saturdays come from.
The agent knows your open dates from the calendar and your recent galleries from your posts. You write the light paragraph; it drafts the rest.
Booking season,
then the season.
The enquiries for next summer arrive between September and February, five to nine months out and further for the couples who plan early. The weddings themselves run May to October. The setup below keeps the booking-season admin to one evening a week and makes the summer Saturdays mostly about showing up with the timeline already in the booking.
- TuesdayPipeline evening
New enquiries sorted by month, €25 date checks answered with a written quote and schedule, retainer links sent. Anything you can't take, decline in a line; the fee refunds itself.
- ThursdayEngagement shoots and planning calls
Golden-hour slots, booked and paid from the bio. Timeline notes go into the booking; you read them the night before the wedding.
- MonthlyThe planning letter
One distance-from-the-day block, one wedding, one vendor, the open dates. Sent before the Instagram post.
- Wedding SaturdaysShoot
Balance was paid 30 days ago. Timeline, family list and the planner's number are in the booking. Nothing to chase on the day.
Numbers from
the market.
Paid at signing, balance due 30 days before the wedding. Planners take 50%. The €25 date check is credited to it.
50% of the fee if cancelled 90+ days out, 75% at 30–89 days, 100% under 30. Tied to the loss you actually suffer, and more defensible than a flat non-refundable amount.
Mid-range packages run $3,000–5,000; luxury $6,000–12,000 and up. A €150 engagement shoot credited to the package is a small, easy first payment.
The top photographers are booked 14–18 months out. The pipeline sorted by wedding month is how you see next summer in this autumn.
Photographers earn the year in a handful of weekends between May and October. Every enquiry that goes cold in a DM is a Saturday you may not fill.
Engagement shoots and consults booked from an open link. Deposits cut no-shows by about 55% on average; a prepaid shoot rarely goes empty.
Market figures from published industry and platform data, September 2026, rounded. Your prices, volume and retention will differ.
“Charging €25 to ask
if I'm free?”
The free inquiry form is still there, and most couples use it. The €25 date check is for the ones who want the answer in writing, with a price, within three days, before they have spoken to you; and in booking season that is a lot of them. You are not charging for a yes or no. You are charging for a quote, a retainer figure and a cancellation schedule they can forward to their parents, and the €25 comes off the retainer when they book.
A schedule. Consumers dispute flat forfeits, and banks side with them more often than with a stepped schedule tied to your real loss: 50% at 90+ days, 75% at 30–89, 100% under 30. State it on the quote and on the checkout. EU buyers have a 14-day withdrawal right on distance contracts unless performance has started; the checkout wording covers it, and a wedding nine months out will never be inside the window.
Keep it for the contract and the payment schedule if it works for you. ApplyForm is the front of the funnel: the inquiry form in your bio, the pipeline, the date check and the engagement shoot. Send the signed couple to whichever contract tool you like.
The couple is refunded automatically and told why; you are nudged at half-time and near the end. Cap the form at ten a week in booking season so one wedding weekend never costs you a refund.
Stop losing Saturdays
in the DMs.
Tell the agent your Instagram handle or website. It reads your galleries and your enquiry replies, proposes the inquiry pipeline, the date check and the engagement shoot with your prices, and sets them up when you create the account.