Booking Terms
Please have these checked before relying on them. They are written to standard UK practice and reflect Ellie's own decisions, but they have not been reviewed by a solicitor. One clause is deliberately cautious: consumers booking at a distance are given a full 14-day right to cancel. There is an exemption in the Consumer Contracts Regulations for services tied to a specific date that many wedding suppliers rely on, which would let that clause be tightened — but only a solicitor should confirm it applies.
These terms apply to work booked with me. Sections 1 to 7 apply to everyone. Section 8 applies to weddings and section 9 to property work.
These terms and our contract
In these terms, "I" and "me" mean Ellie Spencer trading as Ellie Spencer Property Media & Wedding Films, and "you" means the person or business booking the work.
A contract exists once I have confirmed your booking in writing and the booking fee has been paid. Until both have happened, your date is not held, however far the conversation has gone.
Your written quotation sets out what is included. Where the quotation and these terms disagree, the quotation applies.
Booking and payment
Weddings
A booking fee of 25% of the total is payable to secure your date. The balance is due four weeks before the wedding.
Property
Work is invoiced per property. Payment is due within 14 days of the invoice date.
Late payment
Where an invoice is not paid on time I may charge interest and a fixed sum under the Late Payment of Commercial Debts (Interest) Act 1998, and may hold delivery of the work until payment is received. This applies to business clients only.
If you cancel
Cancellation must be in writing. The booking fee is non-refundable, because I will have turned other work away for that date.
Weddings
- More than 12 weeks before the date
- Booking fee retained, no further charge.
- Between 4 and 12 weeks before
- 50% of the total fee.
- Less than 4 weeks before
- 100% of the total fee.
Property
- More than 48 hours before the booking
- No charge.
- Between 24 and 48 hours before
- 25% of the fee.
- Less than 24 hours before
- 100% of the fee.
If you are a consumer
If you are a consumer rather than a business and you booked without us meeting in person, you may cancel within 14 days of booking and receive a full refund, including your booking fee. Just tell me in writing within that period.
After those 14 days, the scale above applies. If you ask me to begin work inside the 14 days, you may be charged for what has already been done.
If you postpone
Weddings
If you move your date and I am available, I will transfer your booking and your booking fee to the new date at no extra charge.
If I am not available on the new date, the booking is treated as a cancellation by you and the section above applies.
Property
A booking can be moved with no charge as long as you give me at least 48 hours' notice. Inside 48 hours a postponement is treated as a cancellation, and the scale in the section above applies.
If I cannot attend
If illness, injury, accident or any other serious circumstance prevents me attending, I will do everything reasonable to find a replacement of comparable standard from my network of trusted colleagues, at no extra cost to you.
If no replacement can be found, I will refund everything you have paid in full.
Beyond that refund, my liability is limited as set out in section 11. I strongly recommend wedding insurance, which is inexpensive and covers far more than this.
If equipment fails on the day I carry backup bodies, lenses and audio recorders, and every card is copied to two drives before I leave. If despite that some material is lost through circumstances beyond my control, my liability is limited to a proportionate refund.
Delivery
Timescales are those stated in your quotation. As a guide:
- Wedding teaser
- Within one week of the wedding.
- Full wedding film
- Eight to ten weeks.
- Wedding photographs
- Within six weeks.
- Property work
- Within 48 hours of the visit.
Work is delivered through a private online gallery. Wedding material is kept available for ten years. Please download and back up your own copies; I keep archives as a courtesy, not as a guarantee.
Creative decisions — framing, edit, grade, music, pacing — are mine. I welcome your input, but the style you see in my portfolio is the style you are booking, and I cannot re-edit a film to a different aesthetic after the event.
Copyright and how you can use the work
Copyright in everything I shoot remains mine at all times. What you receive is a licence to use it, and that licence differs by service.
Weddings
You get an unlimited, perpetual licence to use your films and photographs for personal purposes: sharing, printing, framing, posting on your own social media. You may not sell them, licence them to anyone else, or enter them into competitions as your own work.
Suppliers from your day — venues, florists, planners — often ask for images. They must come to me. They are commercial businesses using the work to promote themselves, and I licence that separately.
Property
You get a licence to use the images to market the specific property they were taken at, for as long as that instruction lasts, across portals, brochures, social media and your own website.
That licence does not extend to:
- Marketing a different property
- Generic agency advertising, brochures or office displays not tied to that property
- Passing the images to a third party, including the vendor, another agent or a developer, without my permission
- Use after the instruction ends, if the property is later re-listed with someone else
Where a property is re-listed with a different agent, that agent needs their own licence from me. Please get in touch and I will quote for it.
Credit and portfolio
I may use the work in my portfolio, subject to consent for weddings as set out in the Privacy Notice. A credit is appreciated but not required.
Weddings
- Coverage hours are those in your quotation, and run continuously from my arrival. Additional hours on the day are charged at £70 per hour, subject to my availability.
- Please provide a meal and a short break where coverage runs beyond six hours.
- Travel within forty miles of my home address is included. Beyond that, travel and any overnight accommodation are quoted before booking.
- I need your venue's permission to film, and must work within any restrictions it imposes. Some venues and officiants restrict filming during ceremonies. Where restrictions prevent me capturing something, that is not a failure on my part.
- Please tell your guests that filming is taking place, and let me know in advance if anyone must not appear.
- I cannot be responsible for missed moments caused by things I was not told about, schedule changes on the day, or guests obstructing shots.
Property
- The property must be ready to photograph on arrival: tidy, lit, curtains open, cars moved, bins out of shot. Preparing the property is your responsibility or the vendor's, not mine.
- I allow a reasonable amount of time on site for the size of property. Substantial tidying or waiting on site beyond that is charged at £30 per hour.
- If I attend and cannot gain access, or the property is not ready to shoot, an aborted visit fee of 100% of the booking applies.
- Cancellations with less than 24 hours notice are charged in full.
- Drone flights depend on weather, airspace restrictions and CAA rules. Where a flight is not legally or safely possible, the aerial element is not charged. I will not fly in breach of the regulations under any circumstances.
- EPCs are lodged on the national register, which is public. See the Privacy Notice.
- Floor plans are drawn from measurements taken on site to RICS conventions. They are for marketing and are not a survey. Areas are approximate and must not be relied on for valuation, construction or legal purposes.
Things outside my control
Neither of us is liable for failing to perform where prevented by something genuinely outside our control — severe weather, road closures, illness, bereavement, power or network failure, government restriction or similar.
If that happens I will contact you as soon as I can and we will agree a sensible way forward, which may include rescheduling or a proportionate refund.
Insurance and liability
I hold £5 million public liability insurance and £1 million professional indemnity insurance. Certificates are available on request.
I do not exclude liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud, or for anything else that cannot lawfully be excluded.
Otherwise my total liability in connection with a booking is limited to the total fee paid for that booking. I am not liable for indirect or consequential loss, or for loss of profit or opportunity.
If you are a consumer, nothing here affects your statutory rights.
Complaints and governing law
If something is wrong, tell me quickly and directly at ellie@elliespencer.uk.com and I will do my best to put it right. Any complaint about delivered work should be raised within 30 days of delivery.
These terms are governed by the law of England and Wales, and disputes are subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of its courts.