Wedding photography...AIBU? WWYD?

[EmmaGate1]

Just wanting some advice as i imagine many of you will be married on here.

I got married last month and the day was wonderful - truly the best day of my life in every way imaginable. So for that reason i have some perspective, please dont get me wrong.

I got our photos back and am quite devastated with them. Background: i put out a status on facebook months and months before the wedding asking for recommendations. Replies came in droves recommending a couple who only do weddings. Therefore i was able to view their work and it was beautiful. We met them, saw several complete stunning albums and booked them.

We had a 'pre shoot' included in our package - £1200 in total - which was perhaps a bit telling. We were scheduled to meet at 3. They texted us in the morning to say that the weather was bad and that they would confirm the details before lunchtime so we knew what was happening. 3pm arrived and we still didnt know what was happening so I called to check. She then came to my parents house and did it there at 4:30pm. We never saw the photos (never sent them to us, but it appears that every other wedding on their gallery has this album). During the visit, we went theough everything we wanted once again (we'd already discussed this at great length in our first meeting). Absolutely fine. I was a very relaxed bride - if i do say so myself - all that fussy bridezilla stuff isnt my style and my day was to celebrate our marriage with our wonderful families.

Fast forward to the wedding. They arrive at the house with their kids sat in the car on a cold november morning. No photos of anything happening at the house, awful portraits, made a very spiteful comment to my mum (the least pushy parent imagineable, and i only learned about how upset & uncomfortable they made her after the wedding when the issue of crap pics came about), were rude to bridesmaids and my 7 year old neice, telling her to "keep out of the way". No photos taken at the house. They shot off early from the house to photograph "arrivals at church". No arrivals. No pics of mum and BMs arriving except for one from far away with their backs to the camera. No pics of parents or brothers (ushers) in church. Leave church, they usher us away from church (so no church pics or confetti) because the "weather is so good we cant miss the opportunity to take pics. Fine. Only pics of us with our mums outside church have only their hands visible/faces obstructed. Gutted.

Arrive at venue, they do bare mimimum portraits outside hotel which are awful and people arent even looking at the cameras (noone was difficult). Pulled away from canape reception to take pics of us two which are awful. Nothing full length or good (im really not fussy either). No photos of parents together, nothing.

They emailed me on the morning before to ask what we wanted. I wrote a list outlining that my main priority was to photo us, parents, brothers (only have one each!) and grandparents and bridal party. No photos of my husbands 3 year old nephew. Only one we have of him is in family formal shot and they clearly just snapped quickly and didnt notice he was looking over his shoulder.

I dont know if they panicked after dinner but the majority of the ohotos are of other guests (and not even our close outlined guests) watching the speeches. More gutting is that they clearly went round all the tables and took posed portraits of them. Nothing of top table apart from during speeches which arent flattering at all. I have nothing memorable.

I have since spoken to my bridesmaids (no photos of them) who have told me (only because i mentioned it to them, they said they wouldnt have said anything otherwise) that they were vile all day and made no effort to photograph them before we left house and were rude and especially spiteful to our liitle neice who is impeccably behaved.

I have contacted them to say that i am not happy and have requested a meeting because so much of the wedding is missing.

My question is: is this normal? I am praying that there are in fact picture of our mums and parents etc. i feel like they stole huge chunks of our day to photograph all for nothing. I know that we had opportunities because our videographer sent us a wonderful "trailer" which captures so much more in 4 mins than her whole album. Is it possible to screenshot videos? What should we say to our photographers, if at all?

[Dowser]

So sorry to hear that . We aren't having a photographer. Just a few snaps of the day from guests.

It's an expense we can do without especially as we are very old and wrinkly, fat and grey lol

Hope you get a hefty part of your money back and despite what happened I hope you have some lovely memories and a long happy healthy marriage.

[LovelyBranches]

You poor thing, this happened to me and it's devastating. It's taken a long time for me to feel at peace with it. We don't have any photo's of me and DH together with us both looking at the camera. Who doesn't have bride and groom photo's on their wedding day? Argh! Our wedding photographer had a dicky fit on the day because he didn't like taking posed photo's, this included signing the register, or any with us standing next to bridesmaids, family or parents. It was a total nightmare.

I have found peace with the photo's because I had them all on a cd. The photo's were good in terms of quality but the photographer had tried to be too arty farty. I edited and cropped every photo and paid a lot for a very expensive photo book from milk books. It took ages to do but it was worth it because we now have an album I'm happy with.

Our photographer put loads of his work on Facebook, but nothing from our wedding day. I think he knew that his work was crap!

[windchime]

Name and shame!

[TheWindowDonkey]

I think part of the issue these days is that, with the advent of digital photography, there seems to be an explosion of so called 'pro' photograohers who are anything but.