We had Brian photograph our wedding at the start of this last summer. We've waited to review because we wanted to see if our perspective changed with time. Unfortunately, if anything it's worse. When we first met with Brian, we loved his portfolio and felt that we had locked in someone we were both very comfortable with to document our wedding. That quickly changed the day of the wedding. We paid extra for Brian to bring a second photographer for the first few hours. The second guy was supposed to take pics of my groomsmen and myself before the start of the ceremony and then take additional shots after the wedding. He showed up five minutes before the ceremony and said he couldn't find us around the church. Not sure how you miss a big group of guys in tuxedos standing at the only entrance. Moving forward, he was about as useful as before the wedding, so if you do decide to go with Brian, save your money and DO NOT get the second photographer. That's if you go with Brian.
The shots during the wedding weren't great, but Brian said they were limited as to where they could shoot from by the church coordinator. Given that numerous guests took better pictures with their camera phones, it's not clear to me how that's the case. After the wedding we set up to take group photos. My wife was really focused on getting one good group photo of the entire wedding party in the church. Unfortunately, we were grouped in a very odd fashion such that a couple groomsmen look like they're photobombing the shot, and it's completely unbalanced. The remaining shots at the church were barely better.
After this we moved to Montrose Beach for some shots with the city background. I think. Based on the pictures we could be at a park anywhere. Granted, it was a sunny day, but I would think you would have the right equipment to take pictures where the background shows up. Again, my wife was excited about the group shot and again, not a single shot looked good. We did manage to take a bunch of "candid" cheesy shots that we'll never want to look back on again.
Finally, we made it to the reception. Before the wedding, my wife had said that she wanted pictures of us with various groups of friends during the reception. Brian basically said that he knew what he was doing and that was expected. Not a single picture with our friends. We have tons of pictures of people eating and of flowers, but not one that was what we had asked for. For those of you who are not married, you will find that you're really being pulled in a lot of directions at the reception and you can't get two thoughts together. But it happened enough times that I was able to think, where's our photographer for this moment?
After we received our pictures, we were rather disappointed in the outcome and Brian placated us with ten free 8x10's of our choosing. We couldn't really stage another wedding to redo the pictures, so I guess that was the best we could do. Ten 8x10's that I could buy through Shutterfly for $10 is now equivalent to screwing up our wedding photos. Great.
So, we've had quite a bit of time to think about this and the feelings have only amplified. I can tell that every time my wife sees someone post their beautiful wedding pictures on Facebook, she becomes very melancholy and there is no joy in the recollection of our own wedding that this should generate. The only pictures of our own wedding that we posted were ones that our friends took that captured the joy of that occasion. Fortunately, there were a lot of other "photographers" there, because the one we paid over a couple thousand dollars for didn't quite show up. The worst part is that we'll never be able to go back and recapture that. It sucks. And that's why after a few months I'm writing this, because while we can't get a redo, this might keep it from happening to someone else. read more
