First, the quality of Aleksey (and Leah's) work speaks for itself. If you want truly magical photos, you won't be disappointed with him. In terms of why to hire Aleksey instead of one of the many other talented photographers who can get you beautiful pictures, we will say that he was completely instrumental in planning and executing our day, and that his positivity, good humor, flexibility, and directions were beyond useful in making our day wonderful. Our families were both SO complementary of the photographs and the photographers, and we cannot recommend them more.

A few highlights:
1. We planned and executed our engagement shoot with Aleksey in the span of about a week--he was able to roll with the changes and delivered us beautiful photos only a few days later
2. He met with us for about 2 hours about six months from our wedding date. We told him what we wanted to have happen in our wedding/what was important to us, and he gave us a timeline to make it work plus 'homework' to ask the other vendors to confirm it worked. With a few minor adjustments, it was the timeline we used. We met briefly before the wedding to finalize as well.
3. During these meeting, Aleksey went through family and friend dynamics--as children of divorced parents, this avoided any awkwardness day of.
4. On the wedding day, Aleksey and Leah rolled with the punches (some changes in timing, horrible weather, underdressed family members, missing family members, unphotogenic family members etc) and kept things running smoothly without panicking. He was (according to the bridesmaids) the man of the day.
5. We had genuinely no idea how to pose, and he directed us completely while still capturing tons of genuinely lovely candid shots--don't take this for granted, not all photographers I've seen have done this and it really showed in the final product.
6. We got our photos 10 days after the wedding (though our wedding was in January, which helped).

I can not believe how lucky we were to book Aleksey for our engagement and wedding photography. He was able to capture the magic that both my husband and I felt on our wedding day. Family, friends, and other vendors all said what a fantastic job he did. When we got the sneak peak photos only 2 days after our day, we were blown away! Could not recommend him more, by far the best of the best!

Couldn't have hired a better photographer! We knew our photos would be great, but they were even better than expected. Aleksey was very nice, easy to work with and even our guests loved him. We're also super appreciative that his wife came to help out with family formals because the church was rushing us. We will cherish their photos forever