Think twice before letting uncle Joe/aunt Jane photograph your wedding

I have heard all kinds of horror stories of what can happen if you don’t hire the right photographer for your wedding. Often weddings are quite expensive, and brides are looking to save money where they can while still being able to experience the wedding of their dreams.

When it comes to photography, couples often contemplate using a friend or family member, who may have a passion for photography. This friend or family member has taken some beautiful pictures of flowers and has offered to photograph their wedding free of charge. Although that deal is very tempting, brides should consider the costs of not hiring a professional.

Let’s look at a real scenario of what happened to a bride I know who let her friend from college to photograph her wedding day, to gain experience. The bride’s friend was a great photographer and was still taking classes and learning how to use her camera. She was a student and so he had a lot of time to pursue her passion of photography. She would update her Facebook page weekly of beautiful nature and urban scenes and friends around campus, and her flower pictures where to die for. So when she offered to do their wedding for free, the bride and the groom contemplated the offer and decided to take her up on it, as they believed she was capable.

On the day of the wedding, she showed up right on time and took some nice outdoor shots of the venue. She then moved inside and began taking some shots of her friend getting her hair fixed. After taking several shots of the bride-to-be, she realized that she needed a wider lens. She had to go back out to her car to get the lens and once she returned and had put it on the camera, she had missed pictures of applying makeup and the trying on of the veil. Then, after taking some shots with the new lens, she went to find the groom.

She took several shots of the groom and all the groomsmen getting ready, but failed to realize that the black of all of the tuxedos was offsetting the light adjustment on her automatic camera. There was not much natural light in the room, and most of the pictures turned out either too dark. Even if she had realized what was happening, she did not have the proper lighting equipment to make the adjustments needed. Her small pop up flash on her camera was just not the right lighting equipment needed. Later, when they reviewed the pictures, they realized that she totally missed pictures of both the ring bearer and the flower girl walking down the isle. As the wedding time approached, she got into position to document this glorious day.

As the south Texas wedding party started down the middle aisle she was firing away nonstop, documenting every step of the ceremony. When it was time for the bride to walk down the aisle with her father, again, she felt like she was in a perfect position. She got some great shots of them standing at the back of the room before walking down, but what she didn’t realize was that the adjustment had not been made to account for motion. Therefore, most of the pictures of the bride walking down the aisle were blurry. She did take some nice shots throughout the wedding and realized halfway through the ceremony that she needed a very wide angle lens to capture both the couple and the wedding party. She reached into her bag and changed out the lens, but before she could change it back she had missed the couple’s first kiss.

The couple wanted some outdoor wedding photographs after the ceremony. There were some good shots but several turned out dark, due to the lack of great lighting equipment. Unfortunately, the couple also realized that the brides friend had missed photographs of various family members during the wedding because she did not have enough CF cards with her to get all the photographs taken.

What they at first thought was a great way to save money, actually turned out to be a wedding nightmare, when their friend delivered all the photographs with a low resolution of 72ppi, this meant they could not even print the few pictures that were delivered. Please consider this terrible story when choosing your wedding photographer!

All photos are taken from the site https://svadba.net.ru/library/299_samyie_neudachnyie_svadebnyie_foto_chast_2