Our wedding was back in June, and we hired what we thought was a very skilled and professional photographer. Her work was beautiful, and we were very impressed. I've done photography since I was young, so choosing a great wedding photographer was of the utmost importance. We paid $3600 for our wedding photographs. This was for a package that included our engagement photos, bridal portraits, and 10-hours of wedding day coverage, plus a guestbook and print. The first issue started when I asked if I could pick out specific engagement photos to be featured in our guest book. I spent 2 weeks personally selecting the photos back in April, but apparently our photographer never printed the book until days before the wedding. She sent a proof of the guestbook in the middle of all of the wedding chaos; I missed the email, and she wound up not using many of the selected photos, instead choosing the images herself, some of which I thought were unflattering and embarrassing. I never said anything about it because I figured it was a mistake and we just got our wires crossed. In hindsight, it was an omen of what was to come.
She photographed our wedding and I met with her several weeks later at which point she told me she was finishing up our photos. Several months passed and I never heard from her. Our online gallery was never posted and the USB of our photos never arrived. I reached out to her in October about when we could expect to receive our photos, and a week later she responded that she had lost hundreds of our wedding photos!!! This was my greatest fear! I was shaking when I heard this. She had kept it a secret for weeks. If I hadn’t contacted her in October, I don’t know how long it would have been before she told the truth. By her estimate, she lost several hundred of our wedding photos (around 1/3 of the total). This included the loss of high-res photos of our first kiss, exchanging rings, shots of us walking down the aisle as husband and wife, cake-cutting photos, pics of our first dance, and what I considered very important photos of me with my grandmother’s wedding portrait. (My grandmother died before the wedding, but was incredibly important to me, and the photo with her portrait meant a lot!) She also lost some of our getting ready photos and family photos.
I feel gutted…especially because most of my family couldn’t attend the wedding. Our wedding was in the middle of Covid-19 and both my mother and sister (and multiple other relatives) did not attend. This placed special importance on the wedding photos since that was the only way they could experience the wedding. It was a tough decision to even go forward with the wedding, but we were encouraged by the thought that we'd have great photographs to document it all. Now important memories are eternally lost!!! And since my family couldn’t be there, they’ll never be able to share in those moments with me. The photographer claims she already tried to have the files professionally retrieved; she also offered to retake family photos (but that’s incredibly inconvenient since both of our families live out of state). She offered us a wedding album to make up for the loss, but both my husband and I think she needs to refund a portion of what we paid. What would be a fair amount, considering we lost irreplaceable, once-in-a-lifetime moments, plus endured the emotional impact of the loss?
