If you’ve known me for a while, you know that I love to serve people. I serve at my church; I love hosting parties and serving; I serve my clients; I even worked one summer as a server at Outback! With working full-time as a school teacher and track coach, I was never able to serve my clients the way I wanted to. I provided a wonderful service for them in giving them great pictures, but I just didn’t have the time to commit to them the way that I wanted through hosting them for dinner, making them personalized items, and much more. As much as I miss teaching, I am glad I am home with Levi and able to add to my business. Now that I’m home, I have more time to spend on investing into my clients in more ways than just taking their pictures and giving them beautiful images.
Starting last year, I started hosting clients in my home and have loved this new change. You saw the post with all of the changes I’ve made to my space. I love how personal it feels meeting in my home and how much more fun we have hanging out when we meet. I’ve already noticed a huge difference in hosting clients at my house vs meeting at a random location somewhere.
Another thing I’ve been able to do is create Welcome Packages for all of my brides. I am so excited to be able to thank my girls for trusting me to take pictures for their wedding day. This package is a part of serving my clients in just one small way.
I debated on whether or not to share what’s in my package, not because I don’t want to “share my secrets” but because I thought about keeping these goodies in the packages a surprise to my ladies; but I want you to see how much I care about my clients and the special touches I do to make their experience extra special; so while I’m not showing you everything, you’re getting a glance at some of what goes into these packages for my girls.
I made a magazine through In Design on Adobe specifically for my ladies as they plan their weddings. Inside are tips and tricks from a wedding photographer on how to plan your engagement pictures and your wedding day. I just love this magazine! I’m so excited to present this to my girls! (Don’t worry, I’ll be posting later about the magazine and showing it off!)
I’m not a professional cookie decorator, but I do love making homemade sugar cookies. I try and find out the bride’s wedding colors and then make cookies for them with their initials, their wedding date, and other decorations for the welcome packages I hope my girls (and their fiance’s) love these as much as I love making them for them!
I love adding some of my favorite things like chocolates and other small goodies into the boxes. I also normally include some sort of monogrammed item with the bride’s initial or what their new last name will be together. I have even gone to my brides’ Facebook pages before and taken a cute picture of the two of them and made a personalized coffee mug for them. No one bridal welcome package is the same, though. I try to personalize it to each girl after I’ve met them and hung out with them at our consultation meeting.
One of my favorite things is writing a personal, handwritten letter to each girl and her fiance thanking them for booking me, but also just sharing my heart and passion to serve them as their wedding photographer. I also include a fun set of “date night convo cards” where they have “love” quotes on the front and have fun questions on the back that could be read on a date night. I have so much fun putting together these boxes! Can you tell?
I hope you had a good time looking at and these fun welcome packages as much as I enjoyed making them… okay, I doubt you enjoyed reading this post that much, but thanks for sharing in my excitement in one more way I get to bless my brides and serve them through my business. I just love it!
