Wedding photography - Stories please!

[Ironmaidan]

I'm starting up working for myself doing wedding photography and I'm looking for advice from those of you who have hired a photographer and what you thought, good or bad. I'd like to know what worked for you and what didn't, any nightmares or any dreams-come-true?

Most of ours didn't come out. We have about 15 in total. None of the big group photos came out at all.

On the plus side, he did only charge us 50 quid, which was the deposit we paid.

Oh and the car which was to take us to the Reception broke down in the churchyard.

And Air France lost our luggage.

But 13 years on, we are still together!

we chose our photographer as a few (totally seperate) friends had used him with good results. We had a few meetings before hand and gave him a list of the groupings/more formal ones we wanted (and our best man helped to assemble the appropriate people) and the rest he just took. I agree that the relatives like a few formal photos and I really wanted one with us and my Grannie and the list made sure they happened. He also did some spontaneous black and white ones which are great.

and then it all went a bit wrong. We got the preview album which we were really pleased with. Thankfully it had all the photos in their true large size as when we came to choose the ones for our album we discovered he'd gone and the studio was shut. Turns out he embezzled money from his work partner/business and went off to Australia. So we were left with all of our photos (which was more than we would have been able to put in the albums so we did gain) but no album and no way to order prints for family as no other photographer would do it due to copyright. But we were luckier than some who never got their photos or only discovered a problem a week or so before their wedding when they tried to confirm all arrangements with him