When my brother got married my sister in law gave me some wedding advise I never forgot: photo mistakes
“It doesn’t matter if you don’t have a lot of food, a big venue, etc. Just make sure to have a good photographer!”
There are hardly any pictures of her wedding. Probably ten or so. A friend of her father was supposed to bring a camera and do the photos, but, for some reason, at the last minute, he didn’t make it. So they had no photographer and this was 2004, when not everybody had a camera on their cell phone.
As she told me this I totally understood: the day comes and goes, but the pictures are forever. It is the one thing that lasts after the wedding is over and the one thing you’ll have as legacy to your children and to your older self.
And with that in mind I knew I wanted a good photographer and videographer to capture a real memory of the day. But, oh, wedding photos are expensive! So expensive! When I started looking at offers and prices I wanted to die!
Because we were on a tight budget and could not afford to spend all our savings on a wedding album we had to hire a cheap one. After all, he seemed all right. He showed me some of his work and it was not bad. He shot my cousin’s wedding and she liked him. And he was half the price of the photographer I originally wanted.
But this is what we could pay so it would have to do.
But it seems that I had read more than him about wedding photography, because I saw in many blogs “the pictures you can’t miss from your wedding album” and well… I certainly missed a lot of really important moments.
We had a photo session of me and my maids getting ready. There are no pictures of my hair. I spent two hours sitting on that chair and paid a fortune for a sophisticated up-do and the guy didn’t think to photograph my hair! Or my nails, my shoes, my veil and accessories, my bouquet, the bridesmaids bouquets, the dress hanged, the dress on (front and back), me putting on my earrings or doing some last minute arrangement.
There is one shot of my sister lacing up my dress and that’s it. photo mistakes
There is no shot of the church from the outside, or the decoration. No shot of me entering the church. The shot of the groom nervously waiting before the ceremony started. The moment when my father saw me for the first time in my wedding dress and his eyes teared up -where the hell was my photographer? Waiting inside!
There isn’t a shot of the guests arriving at the venue, my husband and I entering the restaurant for the reception, getting out of the car, greeting the guest for the first time.
There isn’t a shot of me with my bridesmaids, him with his groomsmen -there isn’t a shot of us with his mother!
And the shots that he took at the wedding were full of amateur mistakes, like a cable peeping out from behind a chair and getting right into the shot, or a lamp behind my head, looking like an antenna.
Not to mention a good photographer should moon in like a ninja, capturing the moment without disturbing it. My guy actually asked us to stop dancing during the first dance so he could take a picture!
For anyone who wants to ever get married this is my advise to you: photo mistakes
“It doesn’t matter if you don’t have a lot of food, a big venue, etc. Just be sure to have good photographer!”