Unresolved conflict with wedding photographer... what would you do?

Post date: 2020-11-22 20:05:18
Views: 103
Our wedding photographer tried to pull out of our contract to shoot her cousin's wedding instead. I was upset but prepared to make other plans and informed her that we would find someone else. She abruptly changed her mind without explanation and refused to speak to me about it any further. The second non-refundable deposit is due next week and I'm torn about what we should do.

My fiance and I were supposed to get married in summer of 2020, but we had to reschedule our medium-sized wedding to early summer of 2021 due to covid. We went ahead with our engagement photo shoot anyway, since it was possible to do that quite safely outdoors. During the photo shoot, I expressed some concerns to our photographer about weddings being possible even that far out. At that time, experts were predicting that a vaccine could be available to the general public by late spring, but no one could say with any certainty.

Maybe that was a mistake. Our photographer had shared posts on social media encouraging clients to come to her with any fears or concerns, because "we're all in this together." I had taken that to heart, commenting with heart emojis and my gratitude that she cared about her clients as people. At the end of the photo shoot, she was raving with excitement about how the shoot turned out, and said she'd have a sneak peek ready to share in 2-3 days. We all said goodbye with big smiles. If she'd been fazed by what I said, she didn't show it.

The next day I saw her name in my inbox, and was giddy thinking maybe she already sent the sneak peek. Instead, it was an email notifying us that "since your wedding plans are so up in the air" and her cousin had just announced that her wedding would be on the same date as ours, she'd be shooting her cousin's wedding instead. She offered two options: Pay full price for her backup shooter (whose name nor portfolio were offered) or cancel our contract. The tone of the entire email was super breezy, as if she was asking whether we'd like photos printed with or without borders.

I wrote back immediately, saying that we didn't know how the pandemic would play out, given that even the experts couldn't tell us how things would look in a year, but our plans were still very much in place. I reminded her that we'd put deposits down and signed new 2021 contracts with the venue and all our vendors. I thought she knew this, because many months prior, I'd checked in with her to ensure she would be available on the new date before confirming it with our venue. About a week after that, she asked me if I was 100% locked in with my venue, because there was another couple interested in hiring her on the same date, and I told her yes. In my reply I told her I was in some shock that she'd taken my words to mean we didn't have real plans for our wedding, and very sad because I was so in love with her photography, as well as worried about finding another available photographer with her style and skill.

Her next email was markedly different in tone. She wrote about how much income she'd lost due to covid, and how she had other couples who were still getting married "NO MATTER WHAT." Then she said her cousin was her first client who truly supported her and believed in her as a photographer, and she had done all of her cousin's family photos since the beginning, and she would "be heartbroken" if she missed the chance to shoot her cousin's wedding only for us to cancel ours. She then admonished me to make a speedy decision, because her cousin was waiting.

Having seen that, there was no part of me that wanted to force her to shoot our wedding. I quickly consulted with a good friend who is an experienced wedding planner and forwarded her the email chain. My friend and all her peers in the wedding industry have been hit hard this year, so I wanted her perspective. Maybe I was being unreasonable. My friend shook her head and said that no, unequivocally, this was a really crappy way to treat a client.

The next morning, I wrote the photographer back letting her know that she was free to shoot her cousin's wedding. I said I wanted to see her backup shooter's portfolio to assess the quality of their work. I also asked her to help recommend other photographers in her network so we could make an informed decision. I requested a phone call in order to go through this in detail. She replied not ten minutes later, and said it was all just a misunderstanding. Her cousin had already booked a different photographer. She wished us "a cozy weekend." I replied again, saying that I still needed to speak to her and asked her to please give me a call. No answer.

At this point I realized that she still hadn't sent us the sneak peek as promised. I kept checking my inbox for those sneak peeks. Over a week passed and we saw nothing. I emailed her asking if she was working on our photos, and again requesting a phone call, this time giving her my availability for the week. Still no reply. In the meantime, I saw she was very active on her social media, replying to comments and sharing posts of other couples with sappy captions, including one caption where she applauded the couple for going through with their wedding, "no matter what."

Then a few more days passed and finally I got an automated email. No personalized message from her, no apology for the delay, no response to my phone call request. Our photo gallery was ready for viewing. And as I looked through the photos, I wondered if they were rushed through, I wondered if she had put any heart into editing them. On the day of the shoot, I had a dark bruise on my leg. She promised it would be easy to photoshop it out of any photos where it would be visible. Well, she did in some of the photos but not in all of them. And she never posted any of our photos to her social media or portfolio, which isn't conclusive in itself, but would be consistent with the notion that she didn't take pride in them as a product of her work.

I cried about it to my closest friends. I had put so much planning into these photos, and was so excited for it after the disappointment of not being able to have our wedding. I know, they're just photos. And so many people have had much worse things happen to them this year. I mean, even I've had objectively worse things happen to me this year. I'm not a fairy tale, ballgown and tiara, "been dreaming of this day all my life" kind of woman, but it meant so much to me to have this experience with my fiance, just a little bit of normalcy and celebration. And yet when I looked at the finished photos, all I could feel was the stress and sadness that came in the days after.

I decided to give my feelings time to settle, and after a couple of months, though I'm no longer so acutely sad, I still haven't been able to bring myself to enjoy the photos. My mom asked to see them and I've been putting off showing her because I know she'll sense that something's wrong.

I'm even more torn on what I should do. Having great wedding photos to look back on was one of the most important things for me, and I have a very picky eye when it comes to photography. Do I give the photographer the benefit of the doubt, because this pandemic has been so hard and crazy-making for everyone? Do I get out of this while I can? Do I insist on a phone call and ask her to tell me honestly, what happened? Do I tell her I'm still worried that, if weddings are a go by next summer, she'll bail on us at the last minute to go to her cousin's wedding? Do I ask her to address that? And if I do "fire" her, what do I say?

I guess I'm trying to figure out if there's some way to resolve this, and if that's worth pursuing. It just doesn't make sense to me that she doesn't like us and doesn't want to shoot our wedding, but also wouldn't take the out when I gave it to her.
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