I was really happy to find Karissa and Stan. Another photographer I had contacted referred me to them. Searching for a photographer was honestly a rather unhappy experience until I found them. I must have contacted 20 different photographers about their pricing and services and I kept running into the kind of people who treated weddings like hostages. I even saw two photographers who said their packages included a cd of your photos one year after your wedding. A year?? And if you wanted the photos sooner you had to pay them an extra $700. I felt like all they saw in me was an atm, and not a person who was excited about getting married.
So enter Karissa and Stan: Finally I found photographers who acted like real people, who were flexible and friendly. I wasn't interested in print packages or books or any of that, I just wanted to have 2 photographers for most of the day, and get copies of all the original digital pictures to print as I pleased later on. Of course, I wanted the photos to be beautiful too, and I didn't want to spend half my wedding budget on it either. KLM totally fit the bill.
They have a blog where you can see their work, and Karissa showed me a couple of online galleries for other weddings she had shot. I told her all about my plans and she was very excited. I live 3,000 miles away from where my wedding took place too, so I didn't even meet her until the wedding day, but she was very responsive with emails and really nice on the phone so I wasn't worried.
When they arrived on the day of the wedding, Karissa stayed with me and started taking photos of us getting ready. She was very unobtrusive, so I was able to go about what I was doing without thinking about the photos. When we got to formals we had a ridiculously long list of combinations to shoot. Seriously, everyone wanted in on our photos. I wasn't looking forward to it, especially since my smile looks fake if I hold it too long. Karissa helped keep the smiles up by giggling behind the camera, and Stan sped things along by organizing all the people. We did all our formal group photos indoors because the wind outside was blowing really hard, but in hindsight I wish we'd done them outside. So when your day comes, do your photos outside, if you have any doubts.
It was nice being able to enjoy my wedding day without worrying about the pictures. They were really important to me, and I'm usually the one behind the camera. Now we've gotten our photos back from KLM and they're beautiful. I like the ones outdoors best, because of the light and the scenery and because they weren't posed like the group photos were. I also love the candid ones of my husband and I during the reception. Karissa touched up quite a few of them, and now I can start putting together photo books for christmas gifts! Yay!
Would I work with them again? Absolutely!