Practical Advice: The Booking Process

A note from Lyndsay: This is my attempt to shine some light on a very important process that is part of working in a commission-type creative business like It’s A Date. It’s not as pretty as the design process (a topic for another post) or as technical as the printing process (yet another blog post), however 'booking' is the first thing we do on the way to your own beautiful bespoke project. I hope this post may answer a few questions if you are considering commissioning any type of design project in the future!

The booking process. Sounds official and a bit scary, doesn't it? And maybe even a little over the top for invitations, of all things. However, it's something that I think about every day. "Booking in" is all about dates, really... which is a nice tie-in for my business name. It’s A Date, like a lot of event vendors, takes on projects on a booking basis – if we work together, it starts with a booking. So what is the inquiry and booking process for It’s A Date? For the most part, it usually goes like this:

1. I receive an inquiry via our website contact form or email into our inbox. It will usually have the event date, a little about the event, the budget and the potential client’s preliminary expectations for the end result, as well as their contact details.

2. I email the potential client back as soon as I can with some further general information about our services (far more detailed than what is on our website), any helpful documents I can provide, any advice I can give, and my pricing sheet. I also answer any specific questions I can if any have been asked, and ask a few of my own in applicable. I also let them know of the current date availability in our production schedule.

3. The client may email back at this stage with more questions, or may want to book in a consultation face to face before they book in their project, or they may just be ready to lock it in! I try to answer each and every question I get, and form a good idea of what the client wants from these emails.

4. If I am able to do the project at this time, and the client is happy to go ahead, the next step is that I send through an invoice for a bespoke Design Payment – the initial cost of their bespoke design process – which once paid, books their project. This is a commission agreement –I will design something bespoke for you to these specifications for this cost. I also send through a Design Agreement, which is signed by both parties. The amount invoiced, and the agreement that I will take on the project, is valid for seven days from the date of this email.

5. Once this is received, I take to my production schedule; write in all the details I need to know at a glance about the project, and book in blocks of time with the client’s name on them: for research, design, revisions, printing, and assembly – all dedicated to this project.

6. The fun of the bespoke design process begins!

It’s a simple enough process (usually completed in a matter of hours) but it does raise a few commonly asked questions, which I've included below. In this article, I use weddings as an example as they are the most time intensive projects I take on and the most commonly requested type of event. I use a very similar booking process with other events too but the timeframes and turnarounds are usually a little shorter.

The first thing you need to know is – there is a schedule! Whilst schedules are a little nerdy, it keeps my head clear and my deadlines achievable. I’m a bit of a control freak: I’ve lived by a work schedule ever since I started designing. It makes sense to use one to run my business too.

What is this 'production schedule' we keep reading about? The production schedule I use is a week by week breakdown of which projects are at which stage of the bespoke design or assembly process, and how many hours are dedicated to each project in that particular week. At any time, I can accurately predict what my workload will be like at a certain time (up to about six months in advance!), which helps when I am considering taking on extra projects or rush orders (or perhaps when I’m organising personal events or some time off, which requires quite a lot of planning in this industry!) Quite often I turn a job down because the certain time period it needs to be designed or printed is looking crazy busy. I like to keep my deadlines free-range – happy and with lots of space around them!

I base the time lines I’m working to on both the individual client's requirements (the scope of their project) and also old fashioned experience of how the process goes: after the completion of quite a few bespoke projects in the past, I know designing something one-off is more involved than it may seem and my time as a designer is used accordingly. I know I can only produce a certain amount of mockups a month. I know that I can only print so many invitations, or items, in a week, based on the speed of my assembly and my printer’s output. I know that pushing the production output to the extreme can often result in a very stressed out and tired designer! It makes sense to try to keep things under control as this means I can offer a far better service, and finished product, to you, and it also means I can keep enjoying the work I am doing.

With the aid of this production schedule, if I receive an inquiry about a date in a peak wedding period – generally any wedding dates in February to May, and September to December in the southern hemisphere – I can work out whether I am able to take the job without stretching myself too thin almost immediately. This is why I often ask about the date of the wedding first when we’re chatting about your project. I can let you know if I'm already booked out for that date at the time you are inquiring. It's always best to check in, particularly if more than a week has elapsed since you last asked. The business is starting to get busier, and dates tended to get snatched up quite quickly lately.

But we don’t expect you to come to the wedding... (A funny response, but a common one - I’ve got it after turning down a job just recently) The date of the wedding is important, not just because of the actual day (even though that’s the most important thing to you as a couple!), but what happens in the lead up to the day, in terms of the last part of the bespoke design process. You may have to bear with me, there are a few numbers involved… When I ask for your date, I first work out what my schedule is looking like six to eight weeks before your wedding. Six to eight weeks is (industry standard) the send out date for your invitations – yours might be sooner or later than this, but for 99% of my clients, this is their yay-we’re-sending-the-invites-out time. I ask myself, how many other invites require this send out date currently on the books (birthdays, announcements, etc., as well as engagements and weddings)? If there are a few, and I know the other jobs will have a bit to them in the lead up to their send out, I won’t book any more work for this time.

I need to calculate the send out date, (and work backwards another few weeks to allow for an estimate shipping turnaround) as it brings me to about the nine or ten weeks out mark. This will most likely be my deadline for your job – when your job is expected by you. I’ll check your deadline week to see what else is “due” in that particular week – not just queued for delivery, but what is on the go in general at this time. If three projects need an intricate design mockup conceived and delivered, at the same time that I will be hand-assembling 128 elaborate invitations for Shaun and Aidan, on the same week that I have two consultations with newly booked clients, then things might get a bit hectic. Another consideration is your due week might be the same week Cameron and David need their reception items – gift tags personalized with their attending guest list, as well as a relationship seating chart. This week has been decided on by them, as this is their RSVP week and they’ll have their final numbers at this time, which is my cue to finish and print their job. These are just examples, of course, but as you may understand, everything needs to be taken into consideration when you are a one person business!

Whilst this isn’t iron-clad steadfast – after all, projects can get delayed, or canceled, or even finished ahead of time – it is a good rule of thumb to work to and so far it has prevented what I think of as a bottleneck – too many jobs due at the same time and only one me to do them all.

What... You only book one job at a time?! Not exactly! I book in one wedding project per designer per date – which means if your name is John and Nicole, you are getting married on the 4th of February 2012, and you have already booked in by paying your Design Payment and we’ve started chatting about your design – that I will take on no other jobs with a wedding date of the 4/02/2012. It seems silly, like I am turning away business, and I sometimes worry that it sounds like it too, or like I do not want the work. But this is a process that has saved oodles of stress and has resulted in a beautiful finished product since I started implementing it. It means that I know roughly how long John and Nicole’s wedding design will take from the moment we start, to the mockup approval process, to the trial print runs and revisions, to the printing, trimming and assembly, to the shipping of the finished invites to the couple, and I have mapped this out in my calendar from the date of their wedding, backwards to the moment they booked me. I have often agreed with the clients at this stage how their design process will progress, with little time guidelines, such as, you will receive a printed mockup in the mail no later than November 12th, so the client knows what to expect at every stage. I like that my clients are able to say with certainty where their project is up to if anyone asks, and for them to know what I will be working on for them at any given time.

I do not want another job at the same time affecting the process they have paid for. Booking two weddings for the same weekend, double booking myself, may mean that I am designing two involved bespoke projects at once, or revising two involved invitations at once, or printing and assembling two elaborate invitations at once, or designing two highly-personalized reception installations at once, which can be chaotic, to say the least. I have had it argued that this shouldn’t matter if the couple require the invitation finished at a different date (say, a month earlier, for example, if they want to send their invites out earlier). I can’t explain it, but there just seems to be a natural rhythm to the timeline that occurs when couples sort out their final guest list and we go to print, and it usually correlates with their send out date in a recognizable chain of events. I make a judgment call based on this second project, how the design process will pan out, and nine out of ten times I will say no. Although it’s awful to say no to a project (just ask any small business owner), I have never regretted it, particularly when a project has gotten REALLY elaborate and I’m hand piecing them: I shudder to think what it would be like to be assembling two jobs with two impending deadlines at once!

I get that, but why don’t you just hire more designers, or assemblers, and/or outsource printing so you can do more jobs? This is a really good question and one I’m happy to answer honestly. I like being responsible for the output of my business. Not only do I love what I do, but I stand by it with great pride. What works for me in terms of production may not work for everyone. Down the line, who knows how It’s A Date will expand but for the moment, I do enjoy running a boutique design studio and the fact I can tell you anything you need to know about your project at any given time – not only that but I have the TIME to tell you anything you need to know. I’m never rushing you because another client requires my attention.

So how early should we book? As early as you know you want to work with me - and you will have to excuse how blunt that sounds – as this is the best chance I won’t have to turn the job down. It may be something you’ve been planning for a while (you were just waiting for the date to be confirmed), it may be a gut decision, it could be something you’ve carefully weighed up after A LOT of research.

As soon as you know, please email me and we can get the booking process started. It breaks my heart to have a potential client email me and say, "Okay! Here are our specs, we are ready to go now!" as I may have to reply and explain that in the time that has passed since they first got in contact, my schedule has become so that I am unable to take on another project in their date range... whereas, if they had booked when they first decided they wanted to go ahead, or when they were first in contact, they would have a very excited designer talking big ideas and exclamation marks as their response.

We’ve left it a little later than that... still worth asking? Yep! For the reasons I mentioned earlier – if something has changed, or been canceled, or is way ahead of schedule… there might be a gap where I’m free as a bird! And this free time may mean that I can take on another job, hopefully yours!

I’ve been emailing you and told you I’m interested, we just haven’t paid yet, but we really want to work with you! We’re booked in, right? I’m sorry to say it because sometimes it can be upsetting to hear, but no. The reason the booking process is not final until a Design Payment is made is because this is the only way there IS a booking for sure. As soon as your payment is received, you have claim over your very own bespoke design process with me, and time is blocked out, at every stage of your design process, for you and you only. I do this because every week, without fail, there are clients who promise me they are working with me, “can’t wait”, however long in advance this promise may be, but then they just disappear… no email, no note! It could be because they’ve changed their mind, because they had a few other options they were pursuing at the same time, or simply because they no longer have the budget for a bespoke design. Often they don’t think they need to cancel because they had just been emailing me. Rightly so, I say. Although I also say, if you’re old enough to host an event, or old enough to get married, you really should let a vendor know if you have decided against working with them, particularly if you have interacted with them on more than one occasion. It’s just polite. But that’s another story, and all I’ll say at this time.

Back to the example of the non-committal potential clients. If I had held their date, saying no to other interested clients, because my production schedule was busy due to this “booking”, I would have made a bad decision because you know the end of the story.

I have had this happen with large corporate firms worth millions of dollars, with good friends, with very professional wedding planners, with “dream clients” and with a very high profile public figure. I have learned to start getting excited about a job when it is actually on the books – and I’m more than happy to share this excitement with you when the time comes.

And, needless to say, if I had started a preliminary design ideas session with a non-committal client without any agreement in place, well, I’d just be a goose. I try to avoid bad decisions and being goose-like as much as I can!

Sometimes if there have been a few emails backwards and forth but no booking, I will give a potential client the heads up by saying that “We’re almost booked up for February 2012, just checking in to see if you still wanted to book?” – if you get one of these emails, it’s code word for: another client wants your date and they’re about to book it. I feel awkward doing it, I don’t want to come across as pushy, but at least in this case, the original client will have warning things are getting busy. For whatever reason, if they want to book but were waiting, or had thought that they could book later… the time is now. I do not aim to pressure anyone. But I do like to avoid disappointing someone if I can help it.

I’ve worked with you before, surely I don’t need to do all this again? Surely you’ll make the time to work with me? I love working with clients for multiple events – and I am very lucky that it happens often. Most repeat clients understand the booking process and are very happy to 'book in' again - and the process is very cruise-y if I already know them. They usually do not have to sign our Design Agreement – as they have already worked to it before – but a Design Payment and booking is still required before we begin the project, whatever it may be.

Sadly, if I do not have your project booked in – even if you mentioned a year ago you were planning on working with me for your wedding invites at the time of another event – I may have to turn down your project due to a full schedule. This happened recently and it was very distressing for all involved. I can’t keep a future verbal booking without payment. If you think you would like to work with me, at an unknown point in the future, just let me know as soon as you have your date and we can go through the booking process. Worst case scenario, you can cancel your booking before any design has taken place and get your money back.

Got a question about the booking process? Please feel free to ask in the comments below, I’d be happy to clarify if I can. Thankyou for reading!