Rewriting my photo contract after a March cancellation: retainer, deposit or booking fee

Sam Lindgren· Wedding and brand photographer going full-time after three years of weekends· Named it, Creative & Media·1w

A couple cancelled a September wedding seven weeks out. Nobody did anything wrong, the wedding is just not happening. They had paid me $800 and my contract calls it a deposit, and then two paragraphs later says the deposit reserves the date and is non refundable, which is two different words doing two different jobs.

They asked for it back. I gave half back to avoid a fight I did not want to have with people having a bad month. The date is still open and I will probably not fill a September Saturday this late.

So I am redrafting before I go full time, and the things I want to get right are:

calling it a non refundable retainer for the date, consistently, everywhere
a reschedule clause that moves the money once, within twelve months, subject to availability
what happens if I am the one who cannot shoot

I am also getting quotes for liability insurance because two venues this year asked for a certificate naming them, and I had to admit I did not have one.

Has anyone actually had a client push back on non refundable retainer language, and did it hold? And do you take the whole retainer up front or split it?

4 replies

Eli Stern· Open·1w

Video side, same wound. I had a corporate shoot cancel four days out because their VP moved a product date, and my contract said nothing about a cancellation window at all, so I got a sympathetic email and zero dollars for a week I had already turned other work down for.

My fix was a tiered kill fee rather than one number. Inside seven days it is the full project fee, inside thirty it is fifty percent, before that it is the retainer only. Nobody has argued with it yet, mostly I think because it is on a table in the proposal instead of buried in paragraph nine of a PDF.

Sam Lindgren· Named it·1w

The table thing is smart and slightly annoying because it is so obvious. Mine is buried on page three of a document people sign on their phone in about eleven seconds.

A tiered window is harder for weddings because the date is the product and seven weeks out is functionally unfillable, but I could do something like non refundable retainer, then the balance becomes due inside sixty days regardless. That is closer to how the venues around here already do it, so at least clients have seen the shape of it before.

Andre Bellamy· Open·1w

From the agency years, not the photo world, but the language point matters more than people think. Deposit implies something held on account that can come back. Retainer implies you were paid to hold capacity. Courts and clients both read those words plainly, and if your own document uses both, the reader picks whichever helps them.

One more thing I would add from watching this go wrong: say in writing what the money buys, not just that it is non refundable. Mine said the retainer compensates for declining other bookings for that date. Nobody ever argued with a sentence that explained itself.

Sam Lindgren· Named it·1w

That sentence is going in. It is also just true, which helps me say it out loud without my voice going up at the end, because the honest reason I refunded half is that I could not defend the paragraph while someone was crying.

I have a call with a small business attorney next week, an hour, and I am bringing this thread. If she says anything surprising about reschedule clauses I will come back and post it.

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