Tuesday, March 15, 2011

wedding cancellations

I'd be curious to hear from other organists if they've ever encountered this, but I have found that I have NEVER been paid in advance for a wedding that ended up being cancelled. A few years ago, a wedding was cancelled the day before it was supposed to happen that I was going to play for, and I hadn't been paid for it yet! Fine by me, but the strange thing is, I almost always get paid sometime *before* the wedding. (maybe 75% of the time?) I don't require it, since I've never actually been short-changed, but when I meet with the couple a few months before their wedding I always encourage them to pay me then, but I tell them that they can mail it in to the church or even wait til the day of the wedding, but I discourage that.
Relatively recently, there has been 3 weddings cancelled that I would have played for. In the case of 2 of them, I hadn't yet met with the couple (not terribly unusual; I'm not sure how far in advance they were cancelled, but that may or may not be strange because sometimes the couple wants to meet with me really far in advance, but other times they wait til like 4 weeks or less!) But then the third wedding that was cancelled recently I *had* met with the bride and worked out her music, she was just going to mail me a check!
Is that unusual? For the only two weddings that I had already been communicated with regarding the music but were later cancelled, I had not been paid! I'm not saying I mind; I would certainly rather not have to worry about whether I should refund a check or not!
BUT...it's like...I wonder, did they suspect? Did they think there was a chance they would call off the wedding?
Any other church musicians experience this?

1 comment:

Luke said...

This has never happened to me. But my policy now is that I must get the check 2 weeks before the wedding and I'm pretty firm about it. I've had too many problems otherwise. I suppose if the wedding was canceled at the last minute I would refund them, and perhaps keep a small deposit to be fair.