How do I set up photographer booking inquiries?
Enable the photography niche, share your /booking URL with clients, manage inquiries from your admin dashboard, and send acceptance emails — all without a third-party booking tool.
VeloCMS includes a built-in booking inquiry workflow designed for wedding and event photographers. Clients fill in a short form on your blog subdomain, the inquiry lands in your admin dashboard, and you accept or decline with a single click. On acceptance, a branded confirmation email goes to the client automatically.
Step 1 — Enable the photography niche
The booking form is only available when your site's niche is set to Photography. Go to Admin → Settings → Site Settings and set 'Niche intent' to Photography. Save the changes. The /booking URL on your subdomain will now render the full inquiry form instead of the default 'unavailable' message.
The Aperture theme is the recommended pairing for photography sites. You can activate it from Admin → Themes.
Step 2 — Share your booking URL with clients
Your booking form lives at /booking on your blog subdomain — for example, https://jane.velocms.org/booking (or your custom domain if you have connected one). Add this link to your portfolio homepage, Instagram bio, and email signature. The /for-photographers landing page also links to it as an example.
What the form collects
- Event type — Wedding, Engagement, Portrait, Event, Commercial, or Other
- Client name and email (required) and phone (optional)
- Event date
- Location or venue (optional)
- Approximate guest count (optional — useful for weddings)
- Package interest — which service or print package the client is asking about (optional)
- A free-text inquiry message (required, minimum 10 characters)
Step 3 — Managing inquiries in Admin
New inquiries appear in Admin → Bookings. The list shows event type, client name, event date, guest count, and a preview of their message. You can change the status inline from the list, or click View to open the full detail page.
Accepting a booking
On the detail page, click 'Accept booking'. You can optionally write a personal note to the client — for example, 'I am looking forward to photographing your wedding at St Paul's.' When you click Confirm & send, the booking status changes to Confirmed and a branded confirmation email is delivered to the client automatically.
Declining a booking
Click Decline to set the status to Declined. No email is sent to the client on decline — if you want to let them know, reply directly to the inquiry notification email you received when they submitted the form.
Marking a booking as completed
After the shoot or event is done, open the booking and click 'Mark as completed'. This moves the inquiry out of the active queue and into your archive. Use this to keep your pending list clean.
Email notifications
Two emails fire automatically in this workflow. First, when a client submits the form, a notification email arrives at the contact email in your Site Settings. It includes all the inquiry details and a direct link to the Admin → Bookings page. Second, when you accept a booking, a branded confirmation email goes to the client with the event summary and any note you added.
Emails are sent via your configured transport. If you have connected a custom SMTP relay (Settings → Integrations), it will be used instead of the default Resend provider.
Booking form on a custom domain
If you have connected a custom domain (e.g. https://janesmithphoto.com), the booking form is available at https://janesmithphoto.com/booking — the /booking path works on all domain variants.
Bot protection
The booking form includes a honeypot field that is invisible to real visitors but filled automatically by bots. Submissions with a filled honeypot are silently discarded before they reach your dashboard.