Wedding photography contracts are full of phrases that sound like they mean something obvious and don't. Here's what the common ones actually mean — ours and everyone else's — so you can compare two quotes properly.
"Print rights"
It means you're allowed to print your own photos: at a lab, at home, on a canvas, on a mug, as many times as you like, without asking us and without paying a licence fee.
What it does not mean is that we hand over the copyright. We retain copyright to the images — standard across the industry — and you get an unrestricted personal licence to use and print them. In practice, for everything a couple actually wants to do with their photos, print rights and ownership feel identical. The distinction matters only for commercial use: if a brand or a vendor wants to use your images in advertising, that's a separate conversation.
"Full gallery"
This is the phrase to interrogate hardest, because studios define it differently.
A full gallery should mean every usable frame from your events, edited and colour-corrected — not a curated selection of the photographer's favourites. What it doesn't include, and shouldn't: duplicates, test frames, mid-blink shots, someone's back, the frame where the flash didn't fire. Nobody benefits from those.
The question worth asking any studio: "Do we get every usable photo, or a selection?" If the answer is a number — "you'll receive 600 images" — ask what happens to the rest.
"Edited"
Two different things get called editing. Colour correction is the baseline — exposure, white balance, and a consistent look across the whole gallery, so your mehndi doesn't arrive warmer than your reception. Retouching is per-image work: skin, stray objects, a wire in the background. Most studios colour-correct everything and retouch a smaller set, usually the images going into your album. Ask which you're getting, and how many of each.
Ask one more thing: who does it. In-house editing means the same eye that shot your wedding, or a colleague trained in the same style, is finishing it. Outsourced editing is common and not inherently bad, but it's why some galleries feel like they were assembled by three different people.
"Raw files"
Most studios don't release raws, and it's not because they're being difficult. A raw file is an unfinished negative — flat, uncorrected, and not representative of the work. Handing them over is a bit like a chef selling you the ingredients. If you want the flexibility to re-edit later, ask about high-resolution JPEGs instead; that's what you actually need.
"Album"
Album pricing varies more than any other line item, so compare like for like: page count, whether pages are lay-flat, cover material, and — the one that catches people — how many rounds of design revisions are included.
"Delivery in X weeks"
Ask whether that's calendar weeks from your last event or from when you finalise your selections, and whether it holds in peak season. Ask separately about films: highlight films and full documentary edits usually run on a longer timeline than photos, and a single "delivery" number in a contract often only covers the gallery.
The four questions to ask any studio
Do we get every usable image, or a selection?
Is everything colour-corrected, and how many images are retouched?
Who edits — your team or an outside service?
What's the delivery window for photos, and separately for films, in peak season?
Any studio worth booking will answer all four in a sentence each. Ask us and we'll answer in writing, before you book. Tell us your dates and the events you're planning, and we'll come back to you with exactly what your week would take.
