Wedding Blog
WHERE WE HAD LEFT OFF:
NOTE: As usual, my recap photos are from a variety of sources. All post-processing has been done by me with each individual’s consent and permission.
***
Not appreciating my directions, the photographer stalked off. Not appreciating the thousands of dollars wasted on him, I grabbed Mr. Shortcake and pulled him towards my number one wish-list location—the 1950s soda shop. I wiped my furious tears and sniffed at my new husband,
“I don’t care where he goes. I’m going to get a milkshake, whether or not we get photos of us!”
Meanwhile, back at the train station, the photographer had told our bridesmaids to go back and wait in the limo.
Why? So many questions, so few answers. My sisters are still hurt - after all of the work they had put into everything, I only have a handful of pictures with my bridesmaids.
Mr. Shortcake and I took a booth in the soda shop. He tried to make light jokes to cheer me up, but even his corny humor couldn’t stop the tears that kept threatening to brim over. Exasperated, I flung my dead bouquet into the corner of the booth, and put my face in my hands.
The bell above the door jingled, and in walked our photographer. I glared at him. Mr. Shortcake glared at him. He bought us a strawberry milkshake - which is the only recommendation I can give the man. We posed in and around the soda shop, and got a dozen photos of us in the same position, fake smiles plastered on our faces. With the help of Lightroom and Photoshop, I was able to salvage most of them. Creative cropping does wonders! 
As per many readers’ requests, here is another example of one of the photos we got from the photographer, untouched. The soda shop series of photos were really horrific - we looked like a zombie bride and groom! Yikes!
I feel blessed that I am equipped and trained to do such heavy corrections. A blessing, indeed!
When I call your name,
Girl, it starts to flame
Burning in my heart,
Tearing it all apart…
No matter how I try
My love I cannot hide….
’Cause Sugar Pie Honey Bunch
I’m weaker than a man should be
I can’t help myself
I’m a fool in love, ya see
Oooooooooooooooh!
Sugar Pie, Honey Bunch
You know that I love you
I can’t help myself
I love you and nobody else!
{ To be continued. Up next? Our awesome reception! }
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Share this post: An Old-Fashioned Kind of Love: In the Sweet, Sweet Soda Shop
That sucks about your photographer, but I think the pictures are really cute of you two, even if the smiles are plastered on.
I LOVE THESE SODA SHOP SHOTS!!! Despite that terrible photog, the images (with your talents in post processing) look fantastic!!!!!
That’s such a bummer that your photographer obviously wasn’t willing to bend in a different direction…but these milkshake pictures are precious!!!!
Ohh! These pictures are so cute! Glad you were able to work your magic and salvage them!
These are super cute, Shortie! Thank goodness you were able to salvage them.
When I looked at the photographer’s original, I thought it looked ok, if a little brown, but yours look so much better! I still can’t believe what an asshole he was, though. I mean it’s one thing to be an ass but get good pictures. But an ass with bad pics? How is he still in business?
NAME AND SHAME.
I don’t think your posts are downers AT ALL- I am absolutely stunned at how well you handled yourself given all the things that went awry! You’re amazing, and I think your blogs are a stunning example of bridely grace which so many lack! Best wishes!
as always, I’m impressed by how well these photos looked when it seemed like everything was going awry!
Thanks for being realistic!
I love the 50’s diner and the milkshake. You look absolutely stunning too Milkshake. Awesome job turning these photos around- they look fantastic
Great job on the touch ups of your photos. I also appreciate your honesty about what went wrong and right at your wedding.
Your pictures (with the magic you did) turned out really cute! I’m sorry your photographer was such a pain, but thank you for continuing to share your day with us!
wow i love the pic that shows your dress in all it’s glory! what a great job you did rescuing your pictures!
So happy to see you got your soda shop pics. You did an amazing job touching them up!
You make me hate your photographer so much every post you make, but I still can see your happiness shine through! Lovvvve the soda shop pix!!!!
I love the pics in the soda shop. Especially the group shot and the ones with the milkshake.
Definitely a good thing you can do those re-touches! And the pictures in the soda shop look GREAT because you’re so talented and clearly very much in love!
Wait, the first image of you two is his “untouched” photo? It looks like he totally processed that one - added a vignette and tried to desaturate it to make it look vintage. Did he give you the RAW files? Just wondering if he told you he didn’t touch the images at all.
This makes me wish that I had a soda shop near where I live! This is such an awesome series of shots! I’m impressed by how you handled everything with the photographer, and how you made the best of such an awful situation. You guys look great in all of your pictures, and with all of your retouching, no one will ever have to know what a terrible photographer you had : )
I don’t think his photos are bad at all, possibly not your style, but you made it sound ten times worse.
you did a great job touching these up! it turned out to be a cute series
@Ruby Slippers: I’m a lifestyle photographer myself, and I work in the same city as him now. “Naming and shaming,” as delicious as it would be, revenge-wise, isn’t a wise move for my own business. I have, however, given his name out to Vancouver brides who have asked for it so that they don’t inadvertently book him.
I’m sorry to hear that your day did not go exactly as you had planned, and especially that your photographer was not fun to work with.
But I’m wondering if part of the problem was that you had sort of planned every tiny detail (wasn’t it you who had set specific music cues to your bridal party walking down the aisle? And then were so upset when it didn’t work out as planned?). Life never goes as we plan it to! It rains, the best rehearsed scenes get flubbed, the flowers we most want are unavailable.
I know that there were a lot of problems with your wedding, but maybe there is a lesson to take away– sometimes you have to go with the flow. I tend to be a control freak, but once I chose vendors that I was confident in, I pretty much left it in their hands. Did my flowers look exactly as I had envisioned them? No. Were they beautiful? Absolutely. Did my hair turn out exactly the way I had envisioned? Not really. Did it look stunning? Of course. Was I a happy, stress-free bride? Yes. Everyone remarked on how calm and happy I was all day.
There is nothing (no perfect picture or location or flower or song) that is worth being teary-eyed on your wedding day for! I hope the rest of your wedding was joyful…
@Jennae: by `untouched`I meant unedited by me. I asked for and received the RAW files. On this particular series he desaturated the images, added a browny-mauve overcast (hence the zombie pallors), and then a vignette. This is in contrast to the bridal portraits, which were done with a green overcast, in grayscale, and with a 1980s-esque fuzzy white vignette. Eek!
Wow, these are beautiful! I wouldn’t have even noticed that we had some “issues” with the photographer.
@hap: It might be helpful for you to read back to previous posts (especially the day-after ones). Or, alternatively, you can read the note on my previous post :
`…NOTE: Some readers have expressed their disappointment in how glum some of my posts are. As a blogger, I am trying to accurately tell the story of my wedding. Not everything was perfect, and many things went wrong. However, as in any good story, a happy ending is happiest when it comes after a plot crisis. And, in the words of G.K. Chesterton,
“Fairy Tales are more than true; not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.”
Take my posts as an example of what things can and do happen at weddings, but take it also to heart that is possible to have everything go wrong - and still remember your wedding day as one of the greatest days of your life.`
These photos are GORGEOUS! I know that the day was less-than-ideal (and if my photographer had stormed off, I probably would’ve thrown a hissy fit right then and there. You handled it with a lot more grace than I would have.) but with your talent and “make lemonade out of lemons”-attitude, you have managed to turn have could’ve been a disastrous set of pictures to lovely ones. Great job!
With all that was managing to go wrong that day, you somehow managed to pull off one of the CUTEST wedding post-ceremony picture sets that I’ve seen. Congrats!
And you look GORGEOUS!
You look wonderful. Regardless of your terrible photographer, dead flowers, late make-up, you seem to have taken everything in stride. Congratulations to you.
i’m amazed that you still looked so happy
well done for not letting things get worse.
i feel for you every time i read yr posts. glad you managed to salvage the photos the way you liked.
curious though: in his portfolio, didn’t he also apply the same post-processing techniques, which you hated?
!@mrspaetz: Not at all! I booked him on a recommendation of a friend - whose photos I loved. He seemed to have something against us from the start (not answering emails, generally sketchiness) but we had booked him from three thousand miles away. We paid money upfront - and all of his photos were subpar compared to my friend’s photos (ours were crooked, blurry, too much noise, heads and body parts cropped off, weird post-processing, and many (most) of the shots we had requested were missing). We never would have booked him if we knew this was the product - I do have SOME taste! 
Great job salvaging the photos. That first one is pretty creepy!
I love your photos. I am really sorry about the bad blood with the photographer. He sounds like a terrible customer service professional. I don’t however, think that that your photos came out poorly. So that’s good.
Holy cow, you made some bad pictures look AMAZING! Love it!
Well you just look fabulous!!! I had an unfortunate vendor incident the day of our wedding, too. Our Day of Coordinator totally disregarded our cocktail hour plan, reception layout, and decorating plan. Blah!!! What got me through it and has just about eclipsed the cringe I feel every time I think about it was the Sex and the City episode when Charlotte marries for the second and final time. Everything goes wrong and Carrie suggests to her that it’s possible that the more that goes wrong at your wedding the happier your marriage will be:-)
I love your recaps- life isn’t a fairy tale, I can’t relate with anyone who thinks so. You’re telling a real story and I dig that 
I like what you did to your pics. The colors look so vibrant after you photoshopped them. The parlor was a good idea.
I don’t get it? are these the ‘bad’ pictures?? I see nothing wrong with them, composition-wise.
I’ll read more and figure it out but I think you’re to hard on your looks even greenish I doubt you looked bad!
@Mrs. Shortcake: I’m glad to hear that you feel it was one of the greatest days of your life! Your photographer’s comments do sound out of line, and the way he processed the photos seems strange. The soda shop pictures are adorable.
All I am suggesting (to other brides-to-be, I suppose) is that sometimes it’s better to plan a bit less, to expect a bit less. Or to just expect that things *will* go wrong. I read your earlier posts– you mention that you were stressed and sobbing in the days before your wedding, that you had an “elaborately” planned timeline, that you are high-strung. Weddingbee is all about planning weddings… but I think that brides sometimes go a bit overboard and over-plan, which can cause undue stress and unhappiness at what should be a happy time.
I tell all my friends that the guests won’t notice that the color of the tablecloth did not match the BM’s dresses exactly, or that the font on the menu was different from the invitation. They won’t notice what’s gone wrong or is missing; but they will notice whether the bride was relaxed and happy, or if she freaked out because the entrance song wasn’t started at the exact right moment.
Hope that makes sense; I don’t mean to insult or offend.
[...] you follow me on Tumblr, you may have seen me post these pictures from this gorgeous soda-shop wedding photo shoot. I wanted to do a separate post about them; but I’m not sure if any of you are really interested [...]
Love the soda shop photos! Since you are so talented at retouching, and you have experienced nightmare wedding photography first-hand, have you ever considered offering to touch-up other brides’ photos gone wrong as one of your photography services?
I can kind of relate to your photographer ordering your bridal party to the limo. My photographer accidentally and incorrectly told my grandparents to go to the reception after the ceremony, when they were supposed to be with my family for formal portraits! I was so upset, because I had stressed to the photographer in our last pre-wedding meeting how important my grandparents’ photos were to me. He immediately apologized and took the blame, and tried to make up for it by getting photos of us with my grandparents later in the day. At least he admitted his mistake and tried to fix it, but I still feel a little hurt everytime I think about him giving my grandparents the wrong directions.
I’m so glad you were able to salvage some of these photos. I am continually impressed with how beautiful and graceful you look in these photos, despite being upset with everything that happened.
Yeah, these turned out GREAT considering what a crappy situation you had with the photog. Photo editing FTW!!! I love the one of you and your husband sharing the milkshake. So sweet =)
Your editing skills make me drool! I bow down to you, gorgeous! Although, I think it is pretty hard for you to take a bad picture
This soda shop series is JUST adorable! And I love the way you cropped them - perfect! You’re right, cropping is key!
My goodness, you’re quite talented with editing! You made your photos turn out beautifully. I can’t wait to see the reception.
@not getting it: With the exception of the first shot, the rest of the photos are not the “bad” photos. I have done extensive photoshop work on all of them (exposure, colour correcting, noise reduction, blemish correction, photoshopping ketchup bottles out of in front of us, vintage-style post-processing,etc). Originally, 75% or so of the pictures in this series were all the same, static, head-to-hands shots of Mr. Shortcake and I smiling awkwardly at the camera. *I* did the compositional cropping on the ones you see above - I noted that in the post. By cropping to emphasize different aspect of the same picture (milkshake/hands/earrings/just me) I was able to get many more different-looking photos out of a bunch of repeats.
@BlushingBride530: As a lifestyle (family , children, babies) photographer, retouching wedding photos isn’t one of the services I officially offer. However, I have been approached privately by brides, and have helped them out. Mrs. Champagne, for example, approached me about her photog situation, but finances precluded an overhaul of her photos in the end.
@Mrs. Shortcake: You have a great talent and skill, so it’s wonderful that you’ve been able to help out other brides. It’s also slightly reassuring to know that terrible wedding photos can be resalvaged by a professional!
SO cute! You are an amazing photo corrector.
Dare I say maybe you had such a Sh**ty photog so that you could discover your talent as a photo retoucher?
Love your photos and recaps!
I think you should be super proud of this achievement, to look so together even when I’m sure it was hard to keep the smile on your face. It takes a strong women to put up with this sort of thing on such an important day.
you did an amazing job with the pics they are adorable, they look so PRO! and I love the soda shop!
I can definitely see why you wanted to take pictures in the soda shop…it is just so cute! I’m glad that you were able to get some photos in there in the end…you did a good job of fixing them up!
Sometimes it is hard to notice how bad images really do look until you put edited images next to un-edited images. I looked at the first photo (that your photographer sent you) and I said “how cute!” Then I looked at the photo that you edited and thought “HOLY crap! AMAZING!” Of course, since you do photography by trade it is more obvious to you how terrible the image does look, I am sure.
I read in one of your posts that you thought your dress looked too big because you had lost so much weight in the weeks leading up to your wedding… I just want to say how freaking fabulous you look. Plus better to lose than to gain… unfortunately, I am a stressful eater and put on probably 10-15 lbs. from when I ordered my dress to when I received my dress and then when I wore the dress (last Saturday). It is no one’s fault but my own… but stress got the best of me 
Shortcake, try to look back on everything that went right. I know your day did not go as planned, no one’s ever does… a lot of “minor” things went wrong with my wedding, too; and I say “minor” because it still went on. Four months before our wedding our reception venue went out of business- that was the biggest of things; it was a complete, utter, time-sucking mess… but it still went on. All of our bouquets were wrong, the DJ did not play our Grand Entrance song DURING the Grand Entrance; the flowers we spent tons of money on from the ceremony never made it to the reception to be re-purposed… the list goes on…
But I, and you, married your best friend Looking back I hope that is what you remember!
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Mrs. Shortcake, Vancouver
Age and Occupation: 24, Marketing Manager/Children's Lit Writer
Fiance's Age and Occupation: 24, Master's Student/Personal Trainer
Engagement Date: August 7, 2007
Wedding Date: October 2008
Blogging Since:
Venue: Ceremony in a historic church, tented lawn reception at a golf and country club
About Me: 1950's housewife sent to the future, reborn as crafting-obsessed, jill of all trades. I enjoy decorating, writing, baking sweet things, singing show tunes/dancing in public, wearing pearls, and knitting sweaters for my furbaby, Harvey, to chew upon. I heart pink, and believe that sparkles are the new black.
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