Weddingbee Blog

Being a total wedding-porn addict (yes, I am in a 12 step program), I was hell bent on having gorgeous photography of our wedding day. It was, however, also the one thing on my earliest to-do list that caused me the most stress.

You see, I absolutely fell in love with the engagement shots we had done by James Day, photog extraordinaire, and lovely person to boot. Naturally we looked into having him do our wedding too, but sadly, he was in Australia at the time. That’s a long ways away from the Dominican Republic and flying him in was not within the realm of our photography budget (though if it were an option, I think I’d have seriously considered stuffing him into one of OUR suitcases). I seriously envy the couples that get to work with him though. Really. You should check him out.

So anyways, where was I? Ah yes. The hunt for a photographer was on.

Like most resorts that do weddings, the Majestic Colonial resort has its own photographer. And of course like most brides, this was the first option I considered. But truth be told, I wasn’t crazy about some of the work I’d seen and I wasn’t a fan of the packages; 50 prints (not originals—prints!!) just wouldn’t cut it for me.

I then thought, well maybe we could find a photographer in Punta Cana that does destination weddings.

Despite my Googling prowess, the search was much harder than I had hoped and I only found one that looked interesting: Photo Souvenir.

Soon I started looking around at photographers who had already done shoots at the Majestic, like: Photography by Stacey, Leslie Spurlock Photography, and Anna and Spencer.

There’s some gorgeous work in there, but I was back to square one. Flying in a photographer from somewhere was just not feasible for us. Or so we thought.

Enter Phil Steingard - or ‘Photophil’ as he is known. And boy, is he known. What, you’ve never heard of Photophil? WELL. Obviously you’re not a Majestic Colonial bride. He’s just one halo short of sainthood in our world.

I found Phil on the Facebook group for Majestic Colonial brides. Are you tired of me talking about this Facebook group yet? Yah, I bet. But I’m telling you, it was THE best resource on the planet when I was planning our wedding.

Of all the photos that brides had posted to the group, his took my breath away and had the most spirit. I started digging around a bit more and soon was overwhelmed by a tide of effusive recommendations from couples that had had Photophil shoot their weddings. The best marketing is word of mouth, and all these mouths said, “YES, BOOK HIM.”

But the best part? Photophil wasn’t just a name credited at the bottom of a beautiful photo. He was everywhere in the forum, answering all the totally-un-photography-related questions of desperate brides.

Think I’m exaggerating?

Snagged from Photophil’s Facebook page

Photophil is a better wedding coordinator than the resort’s own coordinators. (Seriously, he should be on their payroll.)

And then I heard the best news ever. Photophil was already going to be at the Majestic the week of our wedding. OH HAPPY DAY. Because it meant, of course, that the expenses of Phil coming in from Toronto would be dispersed among several brides. Are you hearing me, DW brides? Sharing a photographer is definitely the way to go. So go ahead and flex those social networking muscles. It’s worth it!

Okay, so when I started this post I was all prepared to talk about all the photography planning that I had to do after we got to Punta Cana. But now that I think about it, though it was stressful finding a photographer, once we had booked Photophil, I had no worries at all. I’d spoken to him a couple times before the trip and promised him I’d put together some examples of shots that I liked so we could go over them. Well, I never did get around to that, but in the end, it didn’t matter. We bumped into each other at the beachfront restaurant at the Majestic (Photophil is everywhere, all the time, so this happens a lot) and we sat down and had a long conversation about our preferences. Not only did he plan our photo schedule, but our entire wedding day schedule! I don’t know what I would’ve done without him.

Over the next couple days, other people from our wedding party ‘bumped’ into Phil too so by the time our wedding day came around, we all felt like we knew him. Plus, he’s just that kind of guy.

With a wedding day schedule, I finally felt much more confident and couldn’t wait for the wedding day. But there were still a few things we had to do first.

Photos by - you guessed it - that guy, Photophil.