My wedding already happened in July last year and I was diligent to pay the photographer on time. It costed me $9000 with a final balance of $500 remaining upon completion of the videos and photos. Since July, I have been communicating via emails, phone calls and whatsapp messages to the photographer and he has not been responsive. When he finally responded back to me, he messaged me saying that he will send the photos within a week. It went on like that for a few weeks since he kept saying that he will send it within "this week" but we never received it.
Finally, I got the photos in January this year and they were disappointing. The skintone of everyone in the photos was white washed and everyone seemed to have the exact same skin tone in every photo. The wedding contract says that the approximate time for photos is 60-90 days. I finally got a hold of the photographer via call this week and mentioned how he has been inconsistent with responding back and that I am not satisfied with the quality of the photos and at this point I don't feel like it is fair to pay $500 for poor work and customer service.
I brought up the contract timeline of 60-90 days and told the photographer that I atleast want to look at the quality of the videos first before I even consider paying the $500 and explained that I honored my part by paying on time.
Photographer said that he absolutely won't do that and joked about how I will atleast get my photos and videos before my 1 year anniversary coming up in July this year. Currently, he has agreed to edit the photos he sent and asked my husband and I to pick out 10 photos from each of our wedding events to send to him for edits and that he will complete it within a week but I am SUPER SKEPTICAL about this. I am mentally drained from this whole situation and need some advice on what I can do moving forward. I genuinely feel like I want to take this to court because I have wasted so much time, energy and gotten emotionally stressed over this for a while.