Weddingbee Blog

Quite a while ago, I posted about how we fell into a free photography contract with an acquaintance of mine who offered it up. Many of you expressed concerns, and at the time I had faith it would work out; it had to work out because we had no other option. I should have listened to you, hive! About six weeks before our wedding, I opened my Gmail to find an email from said photographer. My heart sunk. He was writing to tell me that his photography was going in a different direction and he “no longer needed wedding photography for his portfolio.” Six weeks before we needed him; six weeks in which everything else was coming together and many months too late to start a new photography budget. I was a mixture of emotions, from being completely pissed off to the feeling of total betrayal. We emailed back and forth, and it came to him agreeing that he would honor his contract and shoot our wedding “if that’s what it came to.” Long story short, I was getting the many hints that our photographer just didn’t want to be there for our wedding.

One night I had one of those wedding nightmares that so many Bees have written about. My nightmare? That this photographer just didn’t show up. I mean why would he? He had no vested interest in our day, no deposit to return, no money to collect. I laid in bed thinking how awful that would be and my mind drifted to a different thought. What if he did show up but was just so-so in his efforts? Which situation would be the worst?

Mr. Honey agreed, and told me to look into other options. That morning I promptly emailed a photographer in town. Being the small town we live in, I have known him for years (he used to ride bikes around our neighborhood with my brother back in grade school days) and he had recently photographed two friend’s weddings. In fact, I had chatted with him back in August, 2010 about being our photographer, but the chance at free photography swayed me from my initial contact. Nonetheless, a mere five weeks before our wedding, we had ourselves a new photographer. We decided that we would pull money from the sky if we had to, to ensure that we had pictures of our day.

Many, actually most of you, probably wouldn’t have even noticed that I was crediting a completely different photographer than the one I introduced to you back in August. However I wanted to write this post for a couple different reasons.

There will be wrenches thrown into your wedding planning, it happens to even the most organized and prepared brides. I did have a minor, okay major, meltdown after reading that email. I’m here to tell you that it worked out. In fact I believe it worked out better this way than if we had stuck with the original guy. Our new photographer rocked it, he swooped in and handled our wedding like he had been on board since day one.

That brings me to my next point; Zak & Karly of Zak Fleming Photography were incredible. They need a proper shout out so that all members of the hive know who the talented photographers behind the lens on our big day were. We are forever grateful that they were able to work with us for our wedding. If we could pay them a million bucks, we would.

Since I didn’t take the advice you all gave me when I revealed our risky decision, I can’t tell you that if you are in a similar boat as the Honeys that your situation will end like ours. I can’t even tell you not to take the risk, but I will say proceed with caution. We always knew photography was of utmost importance but it wasn’t until our wedding day pictures were hanging on a very weak limb that we panicked. What our original photographer did to us, in my opinion was just mean, but in retrospect we truly ended up on the better side of things. We will be getting amazing shots (seriously, I’ve seen two and I about cried they were so beautiful) by two photographers who truly wanted to be a part of our day. The focus of this post is not to blame the old guy but to show appreciation for the two who stepped up.

Did you have any vendor situations in which you ended up appreciative of the change? How ’bout some praise for those that came late to the game but helped make your wedding day perfect!