We always shot tethered so that we could see what we wanted to print and allow customers to select the pose/expression they wanted. We setup a couple of monitors so that others around the table could also see (most 'events' we did were social celebrations for adults; kids' 'events' we handled a little differently). We printed on Canon i960 printers and we offered 4x6's, 5x7's and 8x10's on-site. We also offered the same sizes on Fuji paper for a slightly higher price but those had to be ordered. We took any kind of credit, check, cash, whatever (sounds like yours won't be the same in that respect). For us, it turned into LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG hours and the hassle of transporting, setting up, working, tearing down, transporting back home and then setting the studio back up until we got enough equipment to be able to keep the studio set up and still show up to an event. Now we just don't shoot 'events'. We made a good amount of money 'at' a couple but those were deals where out-of-town groups were having conventions in town and inviting families to come along (military or medical conventions) and we photographed people for a day or two, sent all the prints up to our print shop, built the packages when the prints go back in, proofed everything and then mailed 'em out to the customers. These were financially more lucerative for us but they were still a moderate pain to keep everything organized and I'm a pretty organized person when it comes to business papers. We actually keep our receipts in triplicate so that the venue we're contracted through gets a copy, the customer gets a copy and we keep the original for our records.
Anyway, pick up a decent $150-200 printer, some 4x6 paper (most cost effective) and an extra set of ink cartridges ($50-100) and make sure you have a person or two to help you (we often had one person helping people sign in and watching their stuff, one person shooting and interacting with the individual, couple or group and then one person reviewing the photos with the potential customers and if they didn't like what they saw, we put 'em back in line but the reviewer could then tell the photog what he might want to be watching for next time around.
Good grief, I almost miss those times. We always got a reprieve and could shoot the shit while everyone was eating dinner and we had prints queued up on the printer. Oh well, good luck to ya.
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