Wedding Photographer in breach of contract?

"Hello, I have not heard from you in x number of days. Per our contract, we were supposed to receive all of our photographs by y date. If we do not hear from you by a date, we will take this matter to small claims court, as you are in breach of contract. Thank you."

I would wait a few more days to see if responds and if not I would e-mail him with a copy of the contract and say “per our contract, photographs should have been delivered by x date. If they aren’t delivered by (date you choose in the near future) we will be taking legal action.”

View Quoted Comment Yep. Sometimes a threat of taking it to court will get them to instantly respond.

Wait a few more days and then contract him again and say what the othet postets say. I guess i wouldnt mention legal action at first. I would say per our contract we should have been given our photos by this date...it is now this date. Please respond back. Also mention you have contacted him multiple times.
If he does not respond i would say then email again threatening legal action.
Do you have a phone number for this person??
Also. To be sure if he is ignoring you or not, if he has a website or a business facebook can you have a friend email him asking about services and pricing just to see if he responds?

View Quoted Comment Agree with this. You've given him enough opportunities to respond to you and he hasn't. I would hold off on any reviews though until after you know which way this is going to go. I wouldn't anger him by leaving a negative review before getting your photos, if he didn't lose them to a corrupted file. Fi gers crossed they're still safe!

Definitely email his and mention our contract says X, we would like an update on our photos by DATE (I would say a week).
If he doesn't respond I'd call, and send the threat of small claims court.
It really really sucks to have to do that, but so far you've done everything right.

Thank you all for your responses! I am going to try calling today and if he doesn’t pick up, then I will leave another email reminding him of the contract and asking if I need to get a lawyer involved. I truly hate confrontation so I’m worried about having to confront him, but I deserve to know what’s going on because he was paid in full before the wedding. Sigh.

I’m in the same boat with my photographer! Wedding was May 19, and now, nothing except four “sneak peeks” from a week after the event. Last I heard was August 7, “thanks for being patient, I’ll have them to you by next week,” and now, NOTHING. No response to email, calls...I even have the wedding planner whom we paid to recommend vendors supposedly trying to contact him/his wife. And still, I see preliminary photos from other weddings being uploaded to his portal. No physical address for his business listed anywhere, so don’t even know how I’d serve him with papers. Hope your situation was resolved...if so, how did you finally elicit a response?

View Quoted Comment I’m so sorry to hear that you’re in that boat! We eventually found that our photographer also worked as an apprentice photographer with another wedding photographer, and I got in contact with her. She called me within 5 minutes, got him on the phone 10 minutes later, and we had our photos within 48 hours, which was good but also frustrating because he either: a) had them ready and was being lazy about getting them to us or b) edited them super quickly just to make us happy.
I would poke around on your photographer’s social media to see if they are working with anyone consistently (a blogger or another photographer) that you can get in contact with. Another thing you can do is threaten legal action, even though I know that’s hard because you still want your pictures at the end of all of this!
I wish you the best of luck!

View Quoted Comment Thanks, B. Sadly, not a PEEP from my photographer (OK, I’ll say it, Mike Arick, Orange County) on social media, FB, IG for months! NO idea who’s behind the new photo sneak peeks being uploaded to the guy’s pixieset page! I’m tempted to drop a link here, it’s just bizarre. I know nothing about his co-shooter from the day-of except that he’s named David. I sent a text yesterday saying, basically, “Please, whatever is going on, I hope you’re okay, but let me know my photos are safe.” My wedding planner also said she knows he moved to another house and another office in the last few months, but no physical addresses published anywhere, so I don’t even know where I’d serve any legal docs. I hope she’s not somehow still recommending him, and I feel like she’s liable in this, too. This is so stressful Did I just get scammed out of 4K? I am glad your situation was resolved, though. Any other input from other brides who dealt with this is appreciated 🙏

View Quoted Comment Okay, what IS IT with male Orange County photographers? Mine was from there also! That’s such a tough spot to be in, and I know how frantic you feel because I was THERE not too long ago. I would go see your wedding planner in person if possible and say, “alright, it’s time we contact him together because he’s in breach of contract and it’s making you look bad too, since you recommended him.”
I did a little snooping for you, dear, and found that Mike only follows one David: David Casas (@david_fullspectrum) - and he does wedding photography so I would check and see if he’s the one! If not, you may have to see if he has any family members (a wife, maybe?) that you could reach out to and just explain that you’re sorry to intrude but you’ve gotta know if your photos are safe. $4k isn’t something most people just toss around lightly, and people need to honor their contracts, or at least communicate when they don’t intend to!

View Quoted Comment OMG I love you. I’m not on Instagram so didn’t think to look for a David he followed. That’s the guy! Just messaged him. Mike’s wife, of course, brushed me off, no response on FB. Maybe I’ll try Instagram.

OK, would you leave any bad reviews at this point? I just want my pictures! Or at least to know they’re safe. I won’t resort to the his-name-is-mud nuclear option unless it would help further my goal of getting what I paid for.

View Quoted Comment I would hold off on the bad review until after you’ve heard back from David - because fingers crossed, he seems more likely to respond and is active on social media! If he doesn’t respond within a week, I would start leaving the bad reviews. It’s LONG past time for you to have received your photos and other brides to be should know. Let me know if he gets back to you! If not, there may be more digging to be done!
Glad to help.

SCORE, I heard back from David...who was FINALLY able to contact Mike (shooting a wedding in Hawaii, what?!) about our photos, and they are safe, at least. As the second shooter, David was not obligated to look into it but did so within 24 hours because he’s a decent human being. Well, David said Mike’s had some personal issues, a sick father, etc, and is WAY behind in his editing. Why he keeps on taking more weddings than he can edit is beyond me, and not responding to any of our correspondence is incredibly unprofessional and nerve wracking. You can’t just ignore people when you have thousands of their dollars and priceless memories and how they just go away. I still have yet to hear from Mike himself, but thank goodness you found David for me. I’ll keep you posted. Thank you so much for helping me identify apparently the *only* person who can hold Mike accountable...
sadly, I’m not really sure what to do to make him work on my pictures, but our wedding (Kaitlyn and Austin) is first on the docket of what appears to be MANY unfinished portfolios if you look on his Pixieset page Anything else you’d do if you were me besides hang tight...?

Hey, sorry it was a busy weekend! I’m so glad I could help find David and in turn, get SOMEONE in contact with Mike on your behalf. I would give Mike until Friday if you haven’t contacted him yet, if David has been able to contact him he may be grinding out the edits to get you the photos right away! I hope he’s contacted you by now, though.
He may be taking on more weddings than he can deal with editing for because he has to, money-wise, but he should be better with communication and update his contract for future clients to have a longer wedding editing timeline for himself.
I’m so sorry about the situation, but keep me posted! I want to know you’ve gotten your photos! My fingers are crossed for you!

View Quoted Comment Shockingly, Mike has NOT responded to me yet, even after some prodding by David. I’ll compose an email on Friday with an ultimatum date. I’ve got a one-month-old little boy now and was not expecting to have to be dealing with this :-/ Hopefully I hear back soon.

How did this pan out? I’m currently drafting a demand email to my photographer who is 7 months late

View Quoted Comment Hi Alissa,
I’m SO SORRY you’re going through this. Eventually, what panned out for me was snooping on his instagram’s tagged posts and finding a photographer he works with and reaching out to THEM. After his photographer friend reached out to him, he got the photos to me within a week. At 7 months, you more than have grounds to pursue legal action. I would try to see if there’s someone else you can get in contact with FIRST, then let them know that without response, you’ll be forced to pursue legal action as they have certainly broken their contract.