A cancellation policy is not the paragraph you write after a client cancels. It is the paragraph that decides whether that cancellation costs you a Saturday or costs you nothing, and it has to exist before the booking, in the contract, where the client has read it.
Most policies fail for the same reason. They cover the client cancelling outright, which is the rare case, and say nothing about the three things that actually happen: the client wants to move the date, the weather turns, or nobody turns up. Write those three and you have covered 90 percent of what you will ever have to enforce.
Say what is non-refundable, and use the right word
The money you take upfront is a retainer, not a deposit. A deposit sounds refundable and in some jurisdictions is treated that way. A retainer is payment for holding a date and turning other work away, which is exactly what it is.
Write it plainly: "A non-refundable retainer of 40 percent is due at booking and secures the date. The date is not reserved until it is received." That last sentence saves you the argument where someone believed a phone call held their Saturday. How much to take, and when to take the rest, is its own decision, but whatever you choose, the policy has to name a number rather than say "a deposit."
Build the refund on a notice ladder, not a single date
One cutoff creates a cliff, and cliffs get argued with. A ladder is easier to defend because it obviously tracks how much of your time is recoverable.
For portrait and commercial sessions:
- More than 14 days notice: retainer held as credit toward a future session within 12 months
- 7 to 14 days: retainer forfeited
- Less than 48 hours: retainer forfeited plus 50 percent of the balance
- No show: full session fee due
For weddings, everything shifts because you turned down a whole year of Saturdays for that date:
- More than 180 days: retainer forfeited
- 90 to 180 days: retainer plus 25 percent of the balance
- Less than 90 days: full balance due
The wedding ladder looks harsh written down and it is standard across the industry, because a wedding date lost in March genuinely cannot be resold.
Reschedules are where the money quietly disappears
This is the clause almost nobody writes and everybody needs. A client who reschedules three times has taken three of your dates, paid for one, and never technically cancelled anything.
The rule that works: one reschedule is allowed with at least seven days notice, must be to a date within six months, and the retainer moves with it. A second reschedule is treated as a cancellation and needs a new retainer. Say it in two sentences, apply it every time, and you stop being the free option in someone's calendar.
Add one line for the date you cannot cover: "If no mutually available date exists within six months, the retainer is forfeited." Otherwise you are holding someone's money indefinitely while they wait for a Saturday you do not have.
Weather needs its own rule, and it should be your call
Outdoor sessions get rained on. If the client decides what counts as bad weather you will move sessions for cloud, and if nobody decides you will have an argument in a car park.
The workable version: the photographer makes the weather call by a stated time, usually four hours before, and a weather reschedule is free and does not count against the one allowed reschedule. That is generous, it costs you very little, and it buys enormous goodwill. Light rain is often the best light you will get all week, so the call is yours to make on craft grounds as well as comfort.
For weddings, weather is never a cancellation. It is a plan B, and the plan B belongs in the timeline conversation, not in the refund clause.
Write down what happens if you cancel
Clients are far more worried about this than about their own cancellation, and a policy that only points one way reads as exactly that. It also costs you nothing to be generous here, because you almost never cancel.
Two sentences: if you cannot photograph the session, you refund everything paid, including the retainer. If you cannot photograph a wedding, you refund everything and make reasonable efforts to find a replacement photographer of similar standard, with the couple free to approve or decline them.
Then add the clause that actually matters, which is what happens to the images if something goes wrong on the day. Cap your liability at the amount paid. Every serious photography contract has this, and it belongs alongside the rest of the clauses that protect you.
Illness, emergencies, and the exception you make anyway
You will break your own policy. A client whose parent died two days before a family session is not a policy problem, and enforcing the ladder on them is the kind of decision that gets discussed in a local parents group for a year.
Handle it by keeping the policy strict and the discretion private. Do not write "exceptions may be made at the photographer's discretion," because that sentence invites everyone to try. Write the ladder, then quietly offer a full credit when the situation deserves it. The difference between a favour and an entitlement is whether it was printed.
The one exception worth printing is a genuine force majeure line covering venue closure, government restriction, and serious illness, where the booking converts to a credit rather than a refund. Photographers who had that sentence in 2020 survived the year better than photographers who did not.
Put it where the client actually reads it
A policy that lives only in clause 11 of a PDF nobody opened is a policy you will be arguing about rather than enforcing. Three places, every time:
- In the contract, as its own headed section, not buried in the payment clause
- In one line on the booking confirmation email, with the notice window and the number
- In the welcome guide you send before the session, in plain language
The plain language version matters more than the legal one. "If you need to move your session, just let me know at least a week before and we will find a new date at no cost. Inside a week, the retainer is used up and a new one is needed to rebook." Nobody argues with that, because they read it in March.
If you want a starting draft rather than a blank page, the free cancellation policy generator builds the clauses from the notice window, reschedule rule and weather terms you pick, in plain English, plus the three line version to sit above your deposit button. It is not legal advice and does not pretend to be, so take it to a lawyer if your work justifies one. Either way, have something written before the next enquiry rather than after the next cancellation.
