Animal Welfare Professionals

Anybody do Christmas photos with Santa?  Tell me about it -- anything to pay particular attention to?  timeline?  etc?

I had one when I was a kid, but my mom already lost it. It's usually good to plan early, like in November or early December, to avoid the rush. If you want specific outfits or props, get those sorted early too. Also, don't forget to check when Santa's available-sometimes it's just weekends or certain hours. Have fun with it!

Hey! 

 We did this last Christmas for the first time and raised close to $1000 in a few hours.

• If you plan on hiring/having someone donate their time to be Santa I would start looking NOW! They tend to book out 3-6 months in advance for the holiday season. If they are donating time you may need to be more flexible on what they have available vs what you may be thinking.
• We had a Mr & Mrs Claus donate their time and come in their full costumes. We originally were going to do it at our shelter but ended up moving the event 2 blocks down the street to Chicken N' Pickle where there were other events already going on. It also helped since they had everything decorated so we just posed them by their giant outdoor christmas tree! 
• We had a pregistration online, where they could sign up for a specific time slot, (we did ours in 1 hour time slots) and had them prepay online to lessen the wait in person and keep things moving as smooth as possible. Also asked how many adults, children, dog, cat, other would be in the photo. 
• We charged $20 per photo
• We also allowed walk ups, but preregistration was able to cut the line
• Thanks to having the event at CnP we gained a lot more photo purchases from people who had no idea we were even doing it but happened to be out at the restaurant/playing pickle ball and decided to have their photo taken with Santa.

If you have any other questions, I'd be happy to answer them!

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Angellee Vincent
Volunteer & Events Coordinator
Grand Prairie Animal Services
Grand Prairie, TX
www.gptx.org/paws
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We've hosted this event for years and it is always a huge success.  Timing is critical for us as we also hold our annual gala in early December.  We try to schedule Santa photos (with pets of course) in mid-November and advertise it as a great gift option for attendees.  We make a decent amount of money and work with an amazing photographer who makes it easy for us to pull off with a host of volunteers.