Contracts may not be the most exciting part of running a wedding business, but understanding what you’re signing can save you from major headaches. In this episode of Mind Your Wedding Business, Kevin sits down with Casey Glasser, founder of Foundwell Legal, to break down the contract terms wedding pros should actually be paying attention to.

Casey shares what to know about common clauses like force majeure, indemnification, cancellation policies, and liability, along with when to push back on a contract and why your agreements shouldn’t be one-size-fits-all.

Casey Glasser is the founder of Foundwell Legal, a law practice focused on event contract review. After noticing how often contracts in the event industry are signed without a clear understanding of key terms, she started the firm to work with event planners and their clients on reviewing vendor and venue agreements, as well as drafting and refining planner agreements. Her work focuses on helping clients identify risk, understand their obligations, and approach negotiations with clarity.

Highlights:

• Contract clauses wedding pros should pay closer attention to before signing
• What force majeure, indemnification, and other common contract terms actually mean
• Why copying and pasting contract language can create problems for your business
• How strong contracts can help set expectations and prevent miscommunication
• When to negotiate a contract term and how to approach the conversation
• Why it’s important to periodically review and update the contracts you use

Connect with Casey:

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Connect with Kevin:

Wedding IQ

Fantasy Sound

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All right, folks, welcome to another episode of Mind Your Wedding Business. I'm here with Casey Glasser today. She's the founder of Foundwell Legal, and she's going to be talking to us today about what your contract needs and why it matters. We're going to be taking a practical look at key terms that should be included in client-facing service agreements and how they protect your business and shape client expectations. But before we do that, Casey, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and how we got you here today?

Yes, hi, thank you so much for having me. So happy to be here.

Of course.

so I was an attorney working at a big law firm. and then I was planning my wedding and my sister's wedding

No.

all at the same time. Chaos for our family. good chaos.

Like how close to each other.

so maybe three months, four months. Yeah,

wow, that is chaos for a family, yes.

so I I had negotiated my wedding contracts for the venue vendors.

and when it came to hers, reviewed them as much as I could as well without although she did sign some without me first. That was not

Hahaha!

great. but anyway, so that whole experience of seeing terms in these agreements that I actually would not have felt comfortable with my clients at my previous firm signing made me want to work with people who are going through the same thing and maybe don't have a lawyer in the family that can make sure everything's good to go and and good to sign.

I have friends in the industry as well who, you know, as planners were expected to review these contracts, but again, without a legal background, didn't always feel comfortable advising their clients and probably shouldn't be. So yeah, that's why I started Foundwell Legal, where I work with event professionals. I also work with content creators, and yeah, that's that's what brings us here.

I love it and content creators is such a big new thing going on in our industry right now. So I'm sure that's a whole nother set of legal terms that need to be included in their service agreements as well. So, all right.

Yeah, exactly.

So let's start here. Why do so many wedding professionals treat contracts as a formality rather than a critical business tool?

I think that a lot of businesses in general really treat contracts like something that, you know, they know that they need to have to protect themselves to an extent, but aren't necessarily aware of all of the ways that it can protect you and also what it can signal to clients about what it's like working with you ahead of time. And so that's a a conversation that I'm excited to have today.

Yeah, me too. All right, so what is the biggest misconceptions wedding pros have about the contracts they're using?

I think what I've seen a lot is this idea of standard contract language being thrown around. And I kind of just take issue with the word standard at all. although there

Okay.

are some boilerplate clauses that basically are sort of copy-paste things like governing law or electronic signatures. Like those are generally fine. but so much of your contract really should be customized for your business, your scope of services, your payment terms.

cancellation, communication, all of these things really should be tailored to your business and the way that you want things to operate for your clients.

All right. Well, it's interesting that you say that because I think a lot of wedding professionals and I remember I've been around I'm old I've been doing this for a very long time. I went online and just grabbed a contract and started doing it and then realized I was doing it wrong and I didn't have everything in there right and then finally hired an attorney to help me get a contract correct. But I think that's where or can I borrow your contract to you know, like and that's probably not a good approach to have is borrowing contracts because what is good for me may not be good for someone else.

Yeah, and it's such a popular approach. I mean, and it makes sense why people do it. Legal fees aren't always the most accessible, but where you can work with an attorney directly, I'll always advise that.

Yeah. All right. So we had COVID and everyone learned about the word force majeure through COVID. So what are

Yeah.

some most important clauses every client facing agreement should include?

scope of services for sure.

Okay.

something I recommend a lot of the time is that it rather than having your scope of services in the contract itself, you have it attached as an exhibit. So that way if you're someone that offers multiple different packages, you can just swap out the exhibit and leave more like the rest of your contract intact. it's affordable, I think, that way to do it. And it's just easy. You don't have go through and update your contract every time. so scope of services.

Very clear payment terms, payment schedule,

Okay.

cancellation, rescheduling. When can you reschedule? When when is that right triggered? force majeure like you said, making sure that's really clear. limitation of liability is another big one. So that's the one that will cap the maximum financial damages that you might have to pay to another party if there's a breach or lawsuit. you

Okay.

just want to prevent unlimited financial exposure.

and you could set that number in the contract and or how does that work?

Yeah.

So if your client paid

Okay. So if it was

$10,000, you're only limited to damages of $10,000. that makes sense.

Mm. And the

only thing is you can't avoid it if you've broken the law or there was you know, misconduct or fraud. Like in in those cases you can't just say, like, I committed fraud, but I only owe you five hundred dollars. Like that's that you can't disclaim. but

Yeah, it doesn't work.

but for for normal things, yeah.

Yeah, well, it's funny to me because during COVID, I had no idea what force majeure was.

Thankfully,

Yeah.

I had force majeure in my contract, so I was covered. But there was a lot of wedding professionals that didn't. is it good to have your contract looked at, regularly from an attorney? what is like, like do a checkup, a tune up or, know, like, what's that a good approach?

Yeah, that's a service that I provide is the sort of checkup. I think there's a few different triggers for when it's time to update your contract. one of them is like you said, COVID. So a big a major event that happens in the world that you want to make sure is covered. Tariffs is another one. So if

yes, tariffs, okay.

you're someone that's managing a budget, you want to say something like, I you know, I'm I can't guarantee the the price of things, but I'll help you come up with the budget or I'll help you try to stay within it, but I can't guarantee anything.

so a world event. if there's just some sort of miscommunication that you see arising with a client or a dispute,

Hmm.

obviously you want to have your contract checked out. an update in the like legal world in general. So in California and I know in several other states as well, there was a some laws passed recently that had to do with like preventing hidden fees. So things like credit card fees.

you have to have certain language in your contract around that for it to be enforceable. You have to be very clear what people are going to be charged. So when things like that arise, you want to make sure that that's enforceable. And because most people aren't like keeping up with you know, laws, you know, maybe

The laws, yeah.

just once a year have it checked out, make sure that there's nothing nothing new that's happened to prevent

Is

it from being enforceable.

when most of the laws go into effect in January 1, right? Or do they come in different times throughout the year?

that's a good question. I mean, I think it

Okay.

depends if it's on a yeah, on like lateral or something.

What what state where you're where you're at? Yeah. Okay. I always know here in

California I always remember like at the end of the year the news is always like all these new laws and beware You know, this is gonna go into effect and this goes into effect and so it just it's probably good to have like an ear or an eye tuned into when that stuff goes in and have someone then look at your contract to make sure you're taking care of

Yeah, just have have your annual checkup.

Like your like a physical.

So not picking on force majeure, but that was missing with a lot of people's contracts during COVID.

Yeah.

But are there certain contract terms that are commonly missing from many industry contracts?

Yeah, what I've seen pop up, and this one's important for planners, is expectations around communication.

yeah.

so what are your business hours? Can people just call you whenever they feel like? Do you prefer email? also expectations around when it's peak wedding season, you might be delayed in in responding to things. And so having setting those expectations up front is really important. another one is

If you are not necessarily going to be the person that shows up on the day yourself to execute it, have that in there so that people don't, you know, misunderstand and think that they're paying for you specifically. If you sometimes

Mmm.

will have another employee execute that. So I I recommend having those those pieces in there as well.

So that makes sense. then is it, if you're getting a lot of questions from clients around a contract or like the same question over and over again, is that another good thing to like look at that you have

Definitely.

something missing in your contract or? Okay. All right. Okay.

Yes, yes, definitely. Yeah, clarity is is everything. So if if

it seems like people are not understanding it, it's might not be so clear.

That makes sense. All right, Casey, how do you strong contracts help shape like client expectations before problems arise?

Yeah, and it it comes back to clarity, like I was just saying. So having expectations around communication and turnaround times and what the client r is responsible for themselves, just having that clear delineation of what everyone is responsible for helps prevent disputes. And it just sets you up, I think, for a smooth client experience and you know, for yourself to not have any surprises jump up along the way. and it and when it comes to client experience too, I think like

your clients aren't going to see much of your work product before they work with you or

Mm-hmm.

have a strong understanding of who you are and what it's like to work with you. So having a contract that's clear, that's professional, that doesn't have typos or like a defensive sort of tone, those sort of things I think set you up for success. And when yeah, when it comes to tone, you you just

Yeah, I was like, wait, I didn't even think a tone. Like, what is that a thing?

Okay.

It is

a thing that I see a lot when it comes to people who download a template and then customize it themselves. Because a lot of what causes people to edit their own contracts is like something happened with a client that was like frustrating, yeah,

So they're mad.

or they're just like, I do not want this to happen again. which I totally get. Like, you know, i think things come up and I don't blame the planners, but having an attorney draft the language for you helps keep it clean, professional, consistent.

throughout different pieces of your contract. You don't want things to conflict. so yeah, your contract can help with all of that.

So is that a thing that happens a lot is like where one clause you'll have in your contract then like conflicts with another and therefore it's like, I don't know if they're battling each other. Those conflicts are what the normal term is there, but like

Yeah, and and

it's they're fighting each other I guess.

Right, it's inconsistent and it's conf it's gets confusing. I think this is one I I would say like with payment, it comes up a lot. So if you're saying in one place that it's a non refundable retainer, but then a few paragraphs down you refer to it as the deposit, like that that conflicts, and can cause confusion around well, is it really non refundable? so yeah, consistency is key.

Well, and also being not a lawyer and being legal stupid is me here. I thought deposits are refundable, right? Okay, so.

They generally are. So careful

which term you use. It just yeah, it it

And

I was told to call ours a booking fee, because as a fee is non refundable. Retainers good to OK, good to know.

Yeah, or retainer. Retainer's good too. But yeah,

clearly non refundable. You want that language in there to avoid confusion for your client.

Yeah, so saying a non-refundable deposit is contradicting itself probably.

it can be or it just makes it like less likely to be enforced as ...

Okay.

See, this is, I always say, and I say it a lot is that all of us wedding pros are good at our art, but very bad at all this other business part of our, what we do. So we need people like you Casey to help us get through all this stuff

Now do the

because we don't, you know, we don't know what we don't know. So

Yeah, and when it comes to the contract review piece of it too, like reviewing vendor and venue agreements, my, you know, planner clients are these like creative, fantastic people that love working with their clients and contract review is boring, so just slide it over.

Well,

and it's very interesting to me too, because you'll see some people's contract is one page and some are eight pages. it's just like, I'm like, the one page is definitely missing some. I'm like, and

I'm gonna go.

then I'm on the 8th page. I'm like, is that a lot? I'm like, is like buying a house, know, like buying a car at one point, you know, I'm like, I'm like, you know, I don't know, there's a magic number for the pages. I'm sure that doesn't make sense. But but it makes you nervous when you see a one page contract, I feel like.

Yes, definitely. But I think

there is something to be said on length that's something that comes up a lot where people are afraid if there's it's too long and intimidating or yeah, short and incomplete, there is definitely I think a sweet spot. but it'll depend on your services.

Yeah,

I'm sure it will.

So all right, Casey, what are some big risks wedding pros expose themselves to when using an outdated or a generic contract?

yeah, so I'll answer that in two parts. For generic

Okay.

ones, they will often or basically always not address things that are industry specific that are important. So,

okay.

backup weather plans or friendor is a a term I've been seeing thrown around a lot. If like you didn't hire a professional vendor to do something, you have a friend do it. As the planner, you don't want to be responsible for that. Social media expectations is important to have in there.

Safe work environment, anti-harassment. That's not usually going to be in a a regular service agreement that you might just download online. So you wanna have something that is tailored to your industry. and when it comes to outdated contracts, this takes us back to what we were talking about a few minutes ago on COVID and tariffs and and those kinds of things. If something new has popped up in the last five, ten years since you've had your contract looked at, that

That's a opening you up to some risk there as well.

Yeah, I imagine. One thing that we had to add, we added like a photo release to our contract a long time ago. So, and then they can opt out or opt in and then that then we had to add a social media clause. So is that something that every wedding professional that is putting all the clients information out on, you know, TikTok and Instagram, they should have some kind of social media photo release kind of thing in their contract?

Yeah, definitely

have have information on, yeah, expectations around that, have a release. and then also it's it's good to have that in your contract ahead of time. I mean, for so many reasons, but one of them also being if you have a client that's just more private and doesn't want their images online, that's something that you should talk about, you know, pretty early on before you do it and then they're upset and yeah, so you want to get ahead of

No,

yeah, and we it's the one thing is when they opt out we like make no photos We put it on everything like every paperwork that of theirs is no like in that we don't even take Instagram like iPhone photo We don't take any photos of anything because we do like lighting decor drapery, you know with my Company and so we don't even take any photos of that because it's just like we don't want anything to come back and them to say like hey, know, like you

took our wedding. we're very, very guarded with that. And not that we ever had anything happen. We just don't want anything to happen, I think is that.

Yeah, it's good

to good to be careful. and one in between thing that sometimes people can be more comfortable with than having images of themselves uploaded. Maybe they're okay with detail shots, like if you just post, you know, what the table looked like and you can still

Mm-hmm.

advertise what your work looks like. but protect privacy in in that sense. Yeah, or like you were saying, maybe they just don't want anything at all and that's fine too. But yeah.

Yeah,

it's- everyone. i think comfort level is different and you have to be okay with that. i think so. All right. So

Yeah

what contract issues do you see most frequently causing disputes between like vendors and clients?

I think most disputes fall under the two different umbrellas. So services and payment. Services, dispute there would look like, well, we thought this was included and now you're saying that it's not, and so those kinds of yeah, services disputes. when it comes to payment, things like, well, we've already made this payment, but now the event's been canceled or postponed.

Can't you just give us our money back or like what what happens now? yeah, those those two categories are are the biggest places where disputes happen. and for weddings too, like these are for a lot of people emotional and stressful situations and your contract needs to address those things before everyone's stressed or disappointed.

Yeah,

and especially because it's such a so emotional what we do for a living, know, so it like having everything clear and outline is probably the best way to be and I think a lot of people go. People don't read. So how do you handle like, you know, it's like they're upset they signed the document But they're at that point they're just stuck right? I mean, there's I mean, what can you do at that point?

Yeah, I mean point them to the paragraph. Ideally very I mean very gently, of course. Yeah, sometimes

On page three,

people are are willing to concede a little bit, but yeah, you gotta you gotta be reading your contracts before you sign them. you can also have things in in, you know, bold that you want to stick out or

Yeah,

or initial? What about having them initial clauses? Okay.

Can have an initial on each page.

or you can just put in your email like please, please, please make sure you read this and happy to answer any questions that you have. but yeah, you just you they need to be right.

Yeah. Yeah, because there

are times that we send out our contract, you know, with a payment link and within like five minutes, it's like the contract signed and the payments taken care of. I'm like, there's

Yeah.

no way they read the contract in five minutes, you know, like, and you're like, yeah, at that point, they're just sign and pay and move on, you know, kind of thing. And so I think it is what it is. So.

Yeah, it's

a risk that they are unfortunately choosing to take.

Yeah. So

we mentioned we talked a little bit about cancellations rescheduling force majeure. So how should wedding professionals think about all those clauses in today's world?

I think with those three especially, there are three questions that need to be answered. Who has the right to cancel or reschedule? Is it just the vendor or is it vendor and client? when do they have the right to cancel without penalty or the right to reschedule without penalty? and also when is that right triggered under what circumstances? so force majeure, for example.

what kind of event is considered a force

Okay.

majeure event? what happens if it takes place? Is it a cancellation? Is there some sort of refund or rescheduling, rescheduling within the year, that kind of thing? and who's protected?

A time

limit on that is important because we learned that through COVID that if you didn't have a time limit, then you're really in trouble. So 10 years, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, they can reschedule in the next ten years. And

if you didn't say anything about additional fees, then you know, maybe you don't get to charge those. So yeah, clarity is everything.

Yeah, yeah, it makes sense. And then you said trigger. what would like if the client has the right to trigger a cancel like

explain that a little bit more, please. OK.

Mm. Yeah. So

in let's say again, force majeure is a good example, but if if a force majeure event takes place, is the client's performance excused? Is the vendor's performance excused, or could either

okay.

either party say, I can't perform under these circumstances? And so there's no no

That makes sense. Yeah, no.

Well, no, and it just, yeah, it makes sense. It's just one of those bad things. And then the other thing too I was gonna mention is sometimes the parent signed the contract, but we're dealing with the kids. therefore,

This is

who's in charge, you know what I'm saying? It's whoever signs the contract is the one you have to be dealing with, I'm assuming.

Yeah,

it's whoever signed it. something there that I think is important is having

joint responsibility there is helpful.

Okay.

Because

then you can recover payment from either person. It gives you as a

vendor the ability to recover from yeah, either of them. There's more flexibility there versus like I've been chasing down the bride forever and the groom's not even responsible.

okay. So that makes sense. then what about like if the bride will just use a know, heterosexual couple here, bride and groom sign the contract, but then the mother of the bride pays for stuff. How does that, you know, how does that all go? And she's wanting to refund, they're not wanting to change, you know, like where, how does that that gets messy, I think. Okay.

It's the person who signed the contract. And and

you can even have language in your contract too about if if there are third party payments made by another family member, letting them know you as as my client, you as the signer of this contract are the one that is responsible.

And that's probably a good idea to have because sometimes you'll get an aunt will pay a part or someone else

Mm.

will pay a part. Yeah. Okay. All right.

Yeah, I think it's helpful just again so everyone knows who is in charge.

Yeah, no, that's where in weddings things get messy. know, there's an aunt paid for the cake, so therefore she feels like she's in charge of the cake, but

Mm-hmm.

maybe the couple paid for it or signed the contract because they're the ones that pick the flavors and all that different thing. So, it's all good.

Exactly.

And and you want to be able to be the one call I mean, ideally calling the shots at your own wedding of like, this is the cake that I like, so we're going for this one.

Yeah,

exactly. All right. So Casey, what are some red flags wedding pros should watch for when reviewing like a venue or a vendor agreement? You know, like, I'm a planner and I'm looking over the DJs contract, the bands contract, the catering contract. What are some red flags we should look for?

Hidden fees is my number one thing, especially

Really?

when it comes to the venue. Because a lot of the time you'll see a number up at the top that says this is what you're gonna be paying. But then if you keep reading, it'll say things like, but also you need to have security or valet or a toilet rental, or there's a twenty percent service charge. And none of those things are in your total at the top. And sometimes you'll also have it say, and this

this happened with a friend of mine, unfortunately. it didn't say it's what it said you have to go through our preferred vendor for those things that I just listed. It didn't say how much they cost at all. And it's not included

in the total. So how how much are they on the hook for? They have no idea.

So make sure you're going through and and figuring out, okay, so it says that this is this is what I'm paying.

So like I'm

paying 30,000 here, but then once I pay for the toilets and this and the security and the valet, then now I'm at, know, yeah,

Or grand? I have no idea.

exactly. Yeah. So you're not getting the big picture. Okay. What? Okay.

So hidden fees,

one-sided rights and protections. So going

okay.

back to force majeure, is it just that if a tornado hits, then the vendor can cancel? Or can you as a couple say there's a tornado and I can't go to my wedding and have no penalty for canceling there? so

Mm-hmm.

anything that's that's one-sided that's not mutual, if you're the the client, you don't want to see that.

price increases also, especially if you're signing a contract a year or so out from when the event occurs, sometimes your contracts will say things, you know, giving them the right to change their prices. And if there's no cap on what that can be increased by, that's a scary position to be in.

Oh yeah, it well like example like you know beef, know, like the the price of beef can go up or down and you're having filet mignon at your wedding and now all of a sudden it's you know $20 and now all of a sudden it's 40. That's a big scary, you know, but yeah Yeah,

Yeah, it changes our budget.

so you should be looking for a cap on those

A cap would be great if you can negotiate for one if it's not there. and if your venue or vendor won't get rid of it, just know what you're exposing yourself to. I think that's everything. Like there there might be some things that they're not willing to negotiate for, but having an understanding of what you are agreeing to is important, like not entering into a contract sort of blindly.

Yeah,

are there any other things that red flags that we should be looking for?

those I would say are the top three. And

Okay.

just anything that in general leaves you confused about what what will happen under these circumstances or what am I getting? Anything that that leaves you confused, just ask questions. something I hear from vendors so often is that they're getting ghosted by Gen Z in particular, and and I think sometimes that happens with like if you're scared by a contract or you're confused by what's happening.

Just ask questions. People are so happy to answer your questions and would rather do that than get ghosted. So

Yeah,

we are in the hospitality industry, so we do like to take care of people,

no,

Yeah.

you know, it makes sense. yeah, it's scary. All right. So how can contracts help protect not only the businesses, but also the client experience?

Avoid miscommunication and conflict

get ahead of it with a a strong contract and present yourself as a professional who is detail oriented, that takes their business seriously and will take your event seriously. You want to create that trust and confidence in you as a professional from the beginning. And I think having a solid contract does that.

Yeah, I just recently saw, you know, reviewing the contracts for a client and one of the DJs contract didn't have like start time end time. I'm like, yeah, yeah, I like your response. yeah. So I was like,

Jeez.

no, we need to get this in writing when they're performing, because if we don't

Yeah.

have it, we don't know when, you know, they could say, yeah, we showed up at five, but the wedding started at four and they're not going to be liable because there was no expectations in there. So.

Yeah.

I played for an hour, I'm tired.

Yeah, yeah, well that that could happen too. Yeah,

I was just like shocked like how do you not have like start time end time in there? I was like that's like like that

Yeah.

that seems like basic basic Contracting for me. Yeah, so Yeah, exactly Yeah,

Yeah. Especially if you do two events in a day, like to be clear.

all right. So for like wedding business owners who feel like intimidated by legal language, what's the best way to better understand?

what they're asking their clients to sign.

Talk to

yeah, talk to an attorney. It's the best thing

Okay.

you can do. I just I wouldn't I would not ask your client to sign something that you don't understand yourself.

Okay.

and and so speaking with an attorney, I I mean it's best really if they're the one that wrote your contract, because then they can explain to you why things are in there and if you don't like it, they can just edit it nicely for you. and I'm not like anti contract template completely, but this

No, no, yeah,

yeah, yeah.

This is one of the one of the reasons why I recommend working with an attorney directly instead, is so that you can have all your questions answered. And and like I said, if you don't like something, there's someone there that can edit it nicely for you. or if you get pushback from a client on a specific term or they want a revision in there, being able to consult with your attorney and say, is this something that I should be flexible on, or is this does this have to be a hardline?

I think is helpful too.

Well, and that's one of my questions I was going to ask because that sometimes happens, especially when we work with corporate clients.

Yes.

Their corporate attorneys read our contract and they rewrite almost the whole contract and half

Yeah.

the time it all becomes one sided towards them. How flexible should you be on your contracts, I guess, is the biggest question.

Yeah,

there are certain clauses that you can be flexible on. So I mean if you want to be. So you if you want to change your services.

Yeah, like the photo release,

that's an easy one to be flexible on.

Yeah,

yeah, depending on on what it says, of course. I mean I'm hesitant to say any like sort of blanket advice without seeing but

No, yeah.

when it comes to like the services that you're going to offer or your payment schedule or things like that, if you're comfortable with it, then you know, that's your choice. That's a business decision.

Well, and that's something they usually

do too is they want to change the payment terms because it's the way they pay things differently. So if you're

Yeah.

comfortable getting paid after the event instead of before, know, that kind of stuff, you know, but yeah.

Yeah. But

certain things like opening your limitation of liability we were talking about before, like

Yeah.

you might not want to open yourself up to to

Well, no, and that's one they

go after, I feel like. That's one they've come after us for all the time. again, they try to make it very one-sided. So.

Yeah.

And as a former corporate attorney myself, I'm like I I know the game here. Like I know

Yeah.

how to how to review for things and and what what they'll be flexible on a little bit and and what they might not.

Well, because there's sometimes too we'll go, no, we're not willing to change X, Y, and Z. And they'll go, OK. And they just try to push back sometimes. But then if you push back saying, I'll accept the change A, B, and C, but not D, F, and G kind of thing. And they're like, oh, OK. Like nine times out of 10, they say,

Yeah, and they're like,

yeah, oh, that's fine.

Yeah, they right. So you're you're kind of just seeing like how I mean, I don't want to say anything bad or anyone, but you seeing

Yeah.

what- it's your responsibility as an attorney to get a great situation for your client. And so that's that's what you're trying to do ultimately. And sometimes, yeah, they'll they'll let certain things go. but yeah, have those things if you can reviewed by an attorney, those red lines, I do it myself. as one of the services that I offer because

Yeah, you don't want to to agree to any major changes that you might regret later. And also on this point, I think it's always helpful to start with your contract and present that to a a corporate or wedding client, or I guess especially corporate in in this case,

Yeah.

rather than having them give you something to sign. Cause it's easier for them to

I think if they mark up your contract with some changes and you can reject or accept, that's a little bit of a you're in a better position for negotiating typically than if

Okay.

they give you something and you mark it up and they're like, This is our standard contract. Don't you know, they're not changing anything. So where you can

Yeah, yeah, that's good advice.

bring your own contract.

Yeah, no, that's good advice. All right, we're getting here to the end, let's wrap up, unless I've missed something, but you can tell me at the end here. But if someone's listening could make just one improvement to their contract this year, what would you recommend they focus on first?

It's all around like the theme. I think that I've I've probably said this word a million times, but clarity, clarity, clarity. If there is something

Yeah. Okay.

that if a client read your contract today, would they understand what they're receiving, what they're paying for, what happens if something changes, what their responsibilities are. Like if there are any of these major questions that you wouldn't immediately know from reading through your contract, tighten it up. It's it's really important to be clear.

Okay. And then is it like you have to work with an attorney that's licensed in your state, right? Is that a thing too? Or? Okay.

Yeah, it depends on what it is actually. So

a lot of these contract terms are pretty standard.

Okay.

so to to an extent I'm able to work with clients in in other states when it comes to like reviewing contracts or even putting them together. but

Okay, basic stuff. Yeah.

where there is like some state specific language, yes, you should consult with an attorney in in your state for sure.

Okay, that makes a whole lot of sense because I didn't even know that was a thing. I learned that during COVID as well. So there's lots of things you learned during COVID. I even

Mm.

got offered to be on Judge Judy during COVID. So that was my, yeah,

Really?

and it was funny because the people that were wanting to go on Judge Judy the groom was an attorney.

And my publicist was like, hell no, you're not going on Judge Judy. But I didn't, had zero desire to do it anyway, but I still, it was the greatest like thing that made me laugh. Like one of my fondest memories of, was like,

Yeah.

I could have been on Judge Judy during COVID arguing over a

That is so funny. ...

retainer. So whether

Mm-hmm.

it was non-refundable or not. and they were arguing.

Hot topic for sure.

all right, Casey, where can our listeners learn more about you and connect with you?

I have a website, foundwell-legal.com. It's F O U N D W E L L dash legal dot com. Instagram @foundwell.legal. same thing with TikTok. You can always send a DM or an email. yeah, happy to talk with anyone.

All right, and we will have all of Casey's information in our show notes, as well as the email blast that goes out. And it'll have her beautiful photo on there as well. if you have any questions, reach out to Casey as well. So Casey, thank you so much. I really appreciate you being on the show.

Thank you, Kevin. It's been so great.

All right, folks, we'll see you next time on another episode of Mind Your Wedding Business.