Bad Experience with Wedding Photography

You hire a true professional with a second shooter. Do not count on your guests to document your day.

Is this a troll post? Sounds like it.

May 1, 2013 is a Wednesday.

Www.guestshots.com

=)

Haven't used them (yet)...but very excited about it!

I have asked a few friends that are good with a camera to get certain shots. The guys getting ready (while our photographer is with us) My groom while our photographer gets me walking down the aisle. Candids at the cocktail hr while we are getting our group shots done. etc.

Hi Celia,

Just working on a budget and I'm trying to figure out which places I should put money and where we can save.

** The date is not set yet, as it is a recent engagement The site just asked me to put something specific down.

Bad experience? I am not sure what you mean..they can't capture everything going on all at once, but a good photog gets the key shots..also your friends can take pics on their own of themselves and upload them to a site..not sure how these two things are mutually exclusive for you?

my DH and I got married 6 months ago, and each day I'm glad that I spent money ours was 2k (nowhere near 5) for our pictures. That is the only thing (besides video and your own memories) that last..but everyone has different priorities.

@ Celia M. What's a troll post? lol. I'm clueless.

I"m sure a lot of other brides will chime in on this one. Disposable cameras are a total waste of money, and counting on guests to capture the wedding on their phones? Not a great idea. More and more of my couples are going 'unplugged' so guests can actually enjoy the day instead of documenting it, just something to consider.

Our photographer has an assistant with her that day so together they should be able to get what I ask.

However, what if (maybe in your thank you cards?) you were to ask your guests "if you have any pictures from our special day, would you please upload them to www.----.com" I saw one of my friends do this after her wedding. She collected quite a few! Maybe make a Photobucket.com account and have everyone upload their pics to your site?

Thank you all for the incredible input!! I actually love the idea of unplugged - no distractions of people checking their phones.

Also, cost is relative to your area. I have a friend that got married recently. Her photos were about $3500 (SF, California-bay area), she had a main photographer and 2 back up photographer (all ladies). They were there the entire day, did their engagement shoot a photo book and the rights to all their photos.

My photographer is less than $2k. We have him for 8 hours, only one photographer (I have a SMALL venue), no photobook, BUT we do get the rights to all the photos (after they are corrected/photoshopped). We don't have a coffee table so we didn't want the photobook and I have a friend who is going to do our engagement shoot.

It seems you're looking at relatively expensive photographers. They do not have to be at all different places at the same time; there're only so many important pictures to take. I am in one of the most expensive parts of the country and we still got a pro photographer with a great package for under 5K. Shop around.

One of the fun things that my family used to do in the past is hand everyone a disposable camera and then at the end of the day they drop it off in a box. Sounds a little crazy I know but some of the pictures turn out amazing and you get photos from all different perspectives.

Since times have changed so have our methods.Today we encourage people to bring their digital cameras and post them on a site we set up for the wedding. Everyone gets a card with the address of the website and a password to upload. It's free to grab all of the photos. Of course this is on top of a professional.

BUT. AS far as photographers go... make sure they have a back up camera and a back up photographer. This is really important!

For my wedding we have several photographers. One for the getting ready section of the wedding. One for the ceremony. And one for the reception. Sounds crazy I know but They are all photog's who I know personally and I wanted them all to be involved in the big day