Buyer Beware!

I figured with the Alaska Wedding Fair coming up this Sunday and everyone getting engaged this was a good story to share with you all since I know you will be looking for vendors for your wedding soon! You know how they say, “You get what you pay for.” Well here’s a story about a wedding planner, and her nightmare wedding photographer that she hired for her wedding!

Yep, it was me! If I was granted a “do-over” from my wedding day, do you know what it would be? Well, besides the horrible, and boring first dance song that my husband chose (which was Feel My Love by Adele in case you’re wondering), I’d want to hire a different photographer than the one I had! We went for the cheapest one we could find and did no research on him, or comparison with other photographers! He was offering a great deal, it was $1200 for the entire day with unlimited photos, I mean that’s a steal, right?

We found this guy (I don’t even remember what his name was) at the wedding fair back in 2009 and he was running a wedding show special. Since we were on a budget, we decided to go for it.  After the show, we made an appointment to meet with him at his studio. He seemed professional and he went through the whole spiel and showed us his previous work. He seemed capable and legit, so we signed the contract and went on our merry way to planning our wedding. This was in January and we were getting married in July.

There came a point in the pre-planning phase that we needed to get in touch with Gary (yeah, that was his name, it’s all coming back to me). I tried several times to email and call him and he never seemed to respond. He pretty much went MIA on us! After getting tired of the non-responsiveness we tried to find other ways to get in touch with him and did a Google search. Whoa, it was pretty disturbing what came up. This guy had a rap sheet that you wouldn’t believe, he had bad reviews, he was reported to the Better Business Bureau, there were horror stories about him not showing up for the wedding, people not getting their photos, and it went on and on. Not only did he have a bad rap in Alaska but there was another city that he had a business in where people also complained about him. It’s almost like when his luck ran out in one city, he moved on to another one!

At that point, we should have just forfeited our 50% deposit, but of course, we ignored the red flags and since we were a couple of months out from the wedding we were afraid to fire him. What if we couldn’t find anyone else?? Which by the way, there’s an overwhelming amount of photographers in Anchorage so, in hindsight, it would have been fine. But we decided to suffer and wait it out instead.

About a week before the wedding Gary finally resurfaced. At this point, I did everything in my power just to be cordial with him and pray that he would show up. You know, it’s like that person at the office that you can’t stand but you just play nice to keep the peace so you can get through it and get it over with. And I didn’t have much faith in him so I put disposable cameras on the tables and had my to be sister-in-law’s husband come with his camera.

However, Gary did come through and he showed up! But, he was pretty much worthless and I couldn’t stand him. All I can remember from my wedding day about Gary was that he seemed to be fixated on one of the guests, a single girl from my husband’s softball team. He was always over where she was taking pictures of her, never mind that I’m the Bride, right? LOL! Towards the end of the night, my husband and I decided to leave a little bit early before all the other wedding guests. The next day we found out from our Best Man that Gary decided to make out with that very guest that he was fixated on, um, Gary was also married. Yeah, when I heard this I was pissed! Seriously, who does that and I didn’t hire you to make out with my guest, I hired you to take wedding photos!

For the next eight weeks, while I waited for my photos, he again became non-responsive. I finally had to threaten him with a lawsuit to get my photos back. Once I said that magic word “lawsuit” my photos appeared. I was relieved to finally get them but I was underwhelmed as Gary once again disappointed me. His photos were boring and he just made copies of the colored photos into black and white versions so it would look like he took so many photos.

So what’s the lesson of this story? Hire a reputable photographer (or vendor), don’t always go for the cheapest one, and of course, do your research. I learned a very valuable lesson that day and when I sit down with my clients one of the things that I always tell them is, if you’re going to spend money make sure it’s on the photographer. Your wedding day is important and it needs to be captured, and if you higher a less than an adequate photographer you’ll be disappointed. It’s a day with moments that you won’t be able to get back.

Remember how I said in the beginning how I wanted a do-over? Well, this July I will be celebrating my 10th anniversary and were getting that do-over! With a very talented and experienced photographer no less, Cori with Outland Creative that I’ve followed on Instagram for awhile now, and I’m pretty confident that I’ll get those photos that I never got on my wedding day.