WHAT’S NEW WITH WILL GREENE PHOTOGRAPHY

I cannot tell you how many times I have sat down over the last few weeks to write this post and stared at a blank screen for way too long. Quite honestly, it’s a post that terrifies me. Change always does. It’s easy for me to post photos from a wedding day or portrait session and let those photos tell the story. Putting into words the changes Will and I have felt moved to make in our business and personal lives isn’t quite as easy.

You see, it’s been seven years since someone first trusted us to capture their wedding day. Looking back, we simply cannot believe that first fateful couple put their trust in us. Before we even shot that first wedding, we already had several more on the books for 2011. We thank God every day for those initial couples putting their faith in us, because, boy, have we learned a lot since then! From the very beginning of Will Greene Photography, we knew that we wanted a wedding centered business. We also knew that it would take several years to get to the point of supporting ourselves from shooting weddings alone. Along the way we were blessed with business growth by capturing families, high school seniors, newborns, and children. We also saw further growth after adding video to our wedding day services. Each step of the way has been fun and rewarding. About two years ago, we noticed that the blessing of a busy business also came with several stressors in our personal lives. Even when I cut back hours at my nursing job, we simply felt there were not enough hours in the day. We found ourselves stretched too thin to serve our current clients well, to plan for future clients, and to enjoy our time “off.” We started making subtle changes that really helped, mostly based around our policy for traveling for sessions, but we still found ourselves bending over backwards at times to accommodate clients during our busiest seasons. What we noticed though, was that when we “squeezed” someone in, we were doing them and our already scheduled clients a disservice. Our wedding clients weren’t getting the best of us when we were already so exhausted from running around here and there for sessions all week. Last year we made some changes that really got our attitudes back on track and excited for our business. We started shooting more sessions here in Farmville which opened up lots of time that would have otherwise been spent on the road. We turned away new clients when we were at the height of our busy season. We really felt these small changes helped us to better serve our clients which made us happier as well.

So what does all this have to with this current post? Well, we’ve been blessed with more wedding bookings than ever for 2018. We’re on track to book and shoot 40 (+??) weddings this year! The thought of being a part so many weddings truly excites us! For the first time ever we weren’t even sad to see our “off-season” come to an end. We do, however, want to make sure that we don’t find ourselves in the same place we were two years ago – exhausted and overwhelmed. Along with 40 weddings (the majority including video coverage) comes engagement and bridal sessions, timeline planning, collecting family photo lists, album designs, consultations, editing all those photos and video footage… Well you get the point. It really is full time (fun) work!

In an effort to better serve our clients these changes will take effect throughout our 2018 season:

-Limited travel for non-wedding related sessions. All sessions that are not an engagement or bridal will need to be within 30 minutes of Farmville and during our busy times we may request that family and children’s sessions are all shot in Farmville. No worries though we have several great locations here!

-Limited weekend availability. Unfortunately, as you can imagine, there just aren’t enough Saturdays and Sundays to go around. Priority for those rare weekend afternoons that we are not shooting weddings will go to bridal and engagement sessions. In the past we’ve been willing to shoot family and children’s sessions the morning of our weddings as time allowed. We’re going to try to avoid that moving forward so that we can arrive at our weddings fully refreshed.

-We have plans to offer more mini sessions throughout the year. Sometimes these will be posted “last minute” if the forecast is particularly nice and there is abundant time in our schedule. As always, we do plan to reserve at least one day in late fall for our Christmas mini sessions. We’re also hoping that we’ll have some clients schedule mini sessions during the week to capture milestones that may not necessitate a full session. These weekday minis will be $125, will not be “prop oriented,” and will definitely need to be in Farmville. Please inquire if you think a mini session will serve your needs!

-We have lots of families that have been faithful to us throughout the years and we absolutely want to remain faithful to them and to continue to do our best to offer a great service! We don’t intend to completely stop offering family and children’s sessions. Scheduling early will help us to accommodate your needs.

-We still have a special spot in our hearts for newborn sessions! However, we often get contacted past the “sweet spot” for capturing the session. If the session cannot be scheduled within the first 14 days after delivery (more ideal is 6-10 days), we will have to refer the session to someone that is more equipped with tricks to capture the session.

If you are already a part of our womb to walk package or have already scheduled with us, please do not worry. We absolutely plan to honor what we have already agreed to with your sessions.

If you’ve actually made it to the end of this post (which I am certain is my longest post EVER), we definitely want to take a moment to remind you that we are truly thankful for EVERY client that has ever trusted us through the years. We are beyond excited for what 2018 has in store for us! We’ve got so many fun weddings scheduled –  our first wedding on a boat and several weddings that are at venues that are on our “bucket list.” We’re so excited for you to follow along our journey through the blog!