Wedding, Funeral, Event Guidelines

[widgetwiz]

My church is architecturally a traditional church - as such we end up
doing lots of funerals and weddings throughout the year. In the last
few months, these events have become more like large productions with
requests for live video, creating videos/slide shows, recording,
special lighting, special graphics, congregational hymns/choruses,
soloists, instrumentalists, etc...

This also is beginning to raise the issue of staffing requirements. In
previous years, a basic funeral or wedding could be staffed by a
single tech. As the production level goes up, so does the staffing
needs.

I feel like we are at a point where I need to create some baseline
documents that outline what you get with a basic funeral or wedding,
to help us draw the line somewhere; and then offer additional services
at additional cost to help cover staff and other expenses.

Any thoughts?

Chris Monaghan
Director of Media & Communications
Aloma Baptist Church

[[Admin] osborn4]

I think you are absolutely right. Writing out specifically what people can expect will help prevent misunderstanding about what's included and what's not.

[Paris MkVI]

And remember, sometimes folks absolutely have to have something - until it must be paid for.

Then suddenly, it is not necessary at all.

[widgetwiz]

...and as busy as I always am...that's not necessarily a bad thing

[Steven]

We have learned a couple of things...

1) The weekend worship services are the top priority, 100% of the time. If an event (any event) is going to adversely affect the weekend services, we won't do it, or at least scale it down until it doesn't affect the weekend. This even includes things like having tired, burned out techs from being at am 8 hour women's conference, or a late-night wedding reception.

2) People will take, and take, and take, as long as it's on someone else's dollar. Start charging for extra things, and people stop asking for all those extra things. If they do still want them, it's hard to say no to an extra $250 bucks.

3) Set up a timeline policy. Make sure everyone knows ahead of time that they need to give your their stuff ahead of time. We try to be very lenient with funerals, however, as they're usually not planned. Weddings, on the other hand, are planned MONTHS in advance. We are not very lenient on weddings. If they can reserve and pay the DJ 4 months out, they can let the venue know that they need a projector.