Weddingbee Blog

Sigh… Stacy Wight, out of Ontario

Just like so many people, our most important vendor search was the one for our photographer. Yeppers, we wanted classic, amazing, simple, evocative photos. Easy as pie, right? I, quite literally, typed “Frederick photographers” into Google until I had some names and portfolios I liked… then I want over to theknot.com and weddingwire.com and tried to look them up and find out their general price range.

We hadn’t set a budget for photography but knew we were willing to spend around $2000—which, in reality, is not a lot. We considered simply posting on Craigslist for an up and coming photographer, but first sent out some inquiry emails and set up some appointments to meet some photographers in the area.

Bella Pictures - a national company that connects photographers to clients.

I loved this photographer, D. Bryant - and he offered two photographers in our price range! I even went to so far as trying to set up an appointment… but he was already booked for our wedding day, 10 months out!

Freed Photography - these guys have dozens and dozens of positive reviews on weddingwire!

Formica Studios had some really beautiful photos…but by the time we connected, I had found my photographer

Weddings by Pamela… we didn’t contact her because I’m pretty sure she was out of our price range… but good God, she had beautiful photos!

Studio C Photography had some striking photographs. I arranged a meeting with Susan, the owner of the company.

All images above from B. Scott Photography. Is it obvious who we went with?

Mr. Pencils and I met in person with just three companies—Bella, Studio C, and B. Scott Photography. We sent out email inquiries to all of the companies above, but some had packages that were either out of our range or were unable to meet during the two weeks I was frantically scheduling meetings (I’d woken up one morning convinced we had already lost the perfect photographer and proceeded to search like a mad woman, thus leading to all of the photo searches above… sigh, I scare even myself sometimes with this wedding planning…)

First up, we met with a Bella consultant, and it seemed so great—they learn all about you, your wedding, and what type of photographs you like via a survey and they hook you up with a photographer who meets your style. They also had a lot of options—for a chunk of change (too large a chunk for us). We also wouldn’t have met our photographer until the day of our wedding. That wasn’t ideal for us… I wanted to know who would be photographing my face!

After meeting with national company Bella, we decided to go with what we had planned—local, Frederick based photographers. The first conversation occurred with Susan of Studio C. She had some great photos and was in our price range, but I didn’t feel like she really wanted to know about our wedding. The hour long meeting dealt a lot with the photographer’s thoughts and experience rather than the question I was waiting for “What do you like in photography? What is YOUR vision?” She also did fashion shoots on the side and spent about ten minutes telling me how they go to New York each year and photograph amazing fashion and beautiful models. I’m no model and I just… didn’t feel that good feeling during our meeting.

Then I met Brian. Brian was a photographer by trade but not necessarily just for weddings—he takes commercial photography, portraits and weddings. His website hasn’t been updated with his most recent photos, which he admitted at our meeting. I liked the ones on his site (the ones you see in this post) but I loved the ones he had from recent weddings that he showed me during our meeting. His photos are crisp and he captures the moments you want, like when you sneak a look at your hubby-to-be as the officiant address the crowd… or the bride and her mother giving each other that look of “can you believe it?!”

Brian asked ME what I wanted! When I told him I preferred the photojournalistic style, he was all for it and able to show me many great examples of his type of work that lined up with this style…

I was sold. Plus, we will get two professional photographers ALL day, in our budget, in addition to an engagement session and bridal portraits!

Did you do a lot internet scouring before settling on a photographer? What was most important to you when meeting with them?