Hate my wedding photos!

[Bridezillapostwedding]

First time posting! Me and my Husband got married in June 2024. I had chosen a photographer 3 months prior to the wedding after being let down by my husband's step dad - but that's another story! I paid 1300£ for a day's photography so I would say mid range.

To cut a long story short. I recieved our photos and hated them. Now I hate being photographed however I believed I looked somewhat presentable on the day and I believed the day was magical. However there was no magic in the photos, not one nice bridal portrait, no familiarity with the venue resulting in terrible angles and lighting, family shots with an ugly building in the background, the list goes on.

So fearing I was being unreasonable I expressed my concerns in the politest way possible after 4 weeks on stewing on the photos. I half expected a call, however I got a email giving me a barrage of excuses as to why the photos were the way they were. Now I'm not a photographer but I know that I have a good eye for detail and can frame a decent picture, and tbh it's just not good enough. However she promised some editing of some shots.

Here come the actual issue, we paid for a albumn prior to the wedding. So I submitted my favourites and 2 weeks later recieved a proof of the albumn. Again, IMO terrible, bottom of my dress cut off in certain pictures, no cropping of photos, no essence of story telling. Part of me wants to cut all ties and ask for my money back. And just get a wedding album created by someone else or myself. AIBU?

I know it sounds dramatic, but it's making me look back on the day with such sadness. I worked so hard towards the day, it was magical and all I can do is question if these feelings I had were genuine because the photos are just so crap!

You can contact the Citizens Advice Consumer helpline for advice on what to do.

I would get more photos done with a recommended photographer if possible.

Bit late but Photoshop is your friend here. Get onto Reddit & check out some of the people

I think if you got married a year ago it is probably too late to ask for your money back.

What you could do is ask your photographer for the full, unedited pictures, and ask someone else to edit them for you. (Or do it yourself.)

I was also disappointed with my wedding pictures and although some of them were lovely I have never got round to doing an album. It's been on my list of things to do for about 6 years now. Should have done it during COVID when I didn't have children really.

However, almost a year after our wedding, my husband and I booked a day off work, I went and got my hair and makeup done again, we put our wedding clothes back on, and we had a lovely photoshoot in a local park with a different photographer, just the two of us.

It's too late to do much about your photos of the actual day, but it might not be too late to take more pictures in your wedding dress with your husband.

we both hated our wedding photos OP, again we felt nice on the day but somehow the photographers got the worst lighting and backdrops and some of the shots were just terrible. We have a few we like that are usable and as it’s our 5 year anniversary next year we are getting our photos redone in Santorini (new dress and suit!)

Not a lot you can do. Whether the photographs are good or not is going to be a matter of personal opinion. Presumably you saw examples of the photographer's previous work before you engaged them.

Did you get a USB with the photos? I’d edit them myself.

I can't help with the actual photo issue but have you asked guests for copies of any photos they took. My professional photos were great but my most favourite wedding picture is an unposed one my brother took of me and DH laughing at something. It's completely natural and neither of us are looking at the camera.

I'm a photographer and I've had a couple of occasions where people weren't overly happy - both times they spent the entire year+ of build-up to the day telling me how easy going they were and that they really had no opinion on what photos they wanted and were barely interested in having photos done at all. Before giving me a huge list of photos that I should have taken after the day was done... (Not saying this is you at all OP!)

Absolutely no way would I have given them the RAW photos to edit. I also have clauses in my contracts about how its subjective and if you don't like the photos it's kind of tough shit. That being said I always send people links to 2 or 3 galleries of full weddings I've done in the past (ideally including their chosen venue) so they're crystal clear on what to expect.

I've also been on the other end where friends have come to me and asked me to edit some of their niece's/cousin's/etc wedding pics from a USB as they hate them. You can make some edits to finished jpegs but there's really not much wiggle room. If you have a tenuous link to a friendly other photographer to pull on they might at least have a look and see if they reckon they could do something with your pics.

I have also done a photoshoot once with a couple about a month after their wedding where they got dressed back up in their wedding garb again as they disliked their photos so much they wanted new ones!

Wow! Thankyou everyone for your advice, this post certainly gained some traction a year on!
I have somewhat come to terms with the photos, but am still majorly disappointed with family shots. Only because I have lost so many people in my family I wanted lasting photos with the ones I have left (thats a bit heavy sorry!). That being said, here we are a year on and still happily married so can't all be bad 😅😅 and we are celebrating our anniversary this weekend!
The plan is at some point to have a nice photoshoot with me and my husband, I'm turning 40 next year so maybe for this (I know I was a geri bride!)
P.s. I dont think I was a demanding bride 😜 @xILikeJamx , if anything I let people walk all over me trying to make them happy. 🤣🤣
It's all heated in the moment I guess and when you take a step out of that wedding bubble you realise there's more to life.
Happy Weekend
🍋🍋🍋🍋