Wedding Photographer lost a significant portion of our wedding photos and lied about it

Photographer lost every photo that she took after switching SD cards half way through our family portraits before the ceremony. We have the bad to mediocre shots her assistant took of the ceremony, reception, and sparkler exit but zero family portraits with my mom or siblings, none of our extended family portraits, no photos of us or bridal party exiting the ceremony, not a single photo that has the breathtaking sunset we had for the second half of the ceremony, none of the dozens of posed group shots we took with friends and family during the reception, not a single picture of the bonfires or games we had set up outside our reception tent. And most of the photos from the assistant are just objectively bad because she gave the main photographer the better positioning so was usually far away or at a weird angle. We have a single photo of our first kiss taken from behind our alter with bridesmaids taking up 2/3 of the picture—also the alter was stained and pretty from the front but all marked up in the back which shows in the picture. The bridal party entrances at the reception are all from an extreme side angle since they were looking at the main photographer. No picture of the cake cutting shows both our faces and the cake cutting at the same time, except the one photo that cuts off half my face/head. The pics of me and my husband feeding each other cake and champagne are exclusively of the back of my head. The only pictures we have focused on guests are filler repeats of a handful of guests on the dance floor—think 9 photos of one woman dancing alone in virtually the same position, 7 of the same kid sitting on the floor. All first dance, and parent dance pictures are from far away and have guests heads prominently in them—no pics of our dip or final pose we choreographed. Our sparkler mock exit we did only for pictures (and at our photographer’s suggestion) includes exactly 3 blurry pictures of us just standing awkwardly at the end, one of which the main photographer’s back takes up about 1/3 of the pic. None of the many kisses and poses she had us stop and do during the exit or when we ran out at the beginning and actually looked excited made it in. If the getting ready pics and first look are more or less her usual quality, is the rest that is missing enough to warrant a full refund? I can’t make any of the albums I’d planned without the family portraits and the only picture we plan on printing for our house is a sunset photo of us exiting the reception that one of our guests took on their phone.


For additional context, she sent the gallery as if everything was normal and I had to ask about missing pictures. At first she tried to say it was only a handful of pictures, just the family portraits, that had been on a corrupt card that wouldn’t upload and she would do a free 1 hour family session to make it up. When I asked why there were no full sunset pictures, she tried to gaslight me that she had no idea what I was talking about and had gotten the sunset (she indicated a pic from the first few min of the ceremony before the sunset happened) and I knew her aesthetic was to focus on people when I hired her so it’s unfair to compare to pics from an iPhone wide angle lens I sent her as an example. I’ve been accused multiple times of attacking her for sending bullet lists of what photos I think are missing. The number tags on the photos when downloaded confirm everything at the ceremony and reception are from the assistant, except for a few from the first 2-3 minutes of the ceremony that could possibly be from the photographer’s body cam. When asked how she could send out a gallery with so many missing pictures without any warning or heads up that some had been lost her she first said she’s a high volume photographer and she can’t be expected to remember specific shots she took to notice if they’re missing. A couple weeks later (we sent the corrupt card to a specialist to look at because she only sent it to Geek Squad), she sends an email explaining that when she uploaded the pictures to send to the third part editor she farms out work to during busy season, she just saw there were pictures from the whole night but wasn’t doing a full edit so didn’t notice. And that she’s hoping and praying for a miracle at the recovery specialist, but either way can’t we all agree she’s been totally transparent this whole time? I had no idea a third party editor was involved or that was even a possibility and it was no where referenced in our contract.