Nobody hands a wedding to somebody with an empty website. That is reasonable, and it is also the reason the first booking is the hardest thing in this business.

There are three ways through it, and all three are honest. None of them involves passing off somebody else’s event as yours.

Assist, and ask what you may show

Work on somebody else’s event, then ask specifically what you are allowed to say and show. Most planners will agree to something along the lines of “assisted on this event” with a photograph or two, provided you ask before rather than after.

Credit them clearly. The industry is small and generous to people who are straight with it.

Coordinate one event for a cause

Offer to run one event end to end for a charity, a school or a community group. You get the whole experience, they get a planner, and everybody knows what the arrangement is.

Treat it exactly like a paid job. Written brief, real budget, proper run sheet, photographs before the guests arrive. The point is the evidence.

Organize a styled shoot

A styled shoot is a small event staged specifically to be photographed. You bring the suppliers together, they each get images for their own portfolios, and you get a set of pictures that look like your taste.

Be honest about what it is. Presenting a styled shoot as a real wedding is the one thing in this list that will genuinely damage you if anybody notices, and somebody always notices.

What to photograph

  • The room in the quarter of an hour after the last supplier leaves and before the first guest arrives.
  • Details you chose rather than details the venue owns.
  • One wide shot that shows the whole space, because it is the one everybody wants and the one nobody remembers to take.

Three events is usually enough to stop being asked. The fourth client rarely asks at all.