Could You Take My Picture? / Cause I Won’t Remember

IIIIIIIIIIII feel like a newbooooooorrrrrnn....

Ahem, sorry. Does anyone else start randomly singing this song when talking about photography? Just me? Okay then...

Aside from finding a venue, finding a photographer was high up on our list of things to do right after our engagement. Even though we were still over a year and a half out that wasn't stopping me from contacting photographers for availability and pricing.  

Now I know I’ve mentioned before about being a semi-long distance bride. My hometown is 3 hours away from where we’re currently living so vendor shopping can be tough. Add in the fact that NONE of our friends are married yet and you’ve got yourself a couple of clueless Coyotes.

Image via IMDB

I started the photographer hunt by searching through wedding reviews on good ole Wedding Wire.

And, Holy Hat, there are a lot of photographers in the world. I did my best to sort through them. And by sort through them I mean I spent hours of my life (literally) scrolling through photography galleries on my computer. Part of my anal Type-A personality means leaving no stone unturned. I went through hundreds of (mostly crappy) sites just so I could be sure that I wasn’t missing out on my diamond in the rough.

Image via The Box Set

I somehow managed to narrow a list of over a hundred to somewhere around 30. Which is still crazy huge when you only need ONE. The first step was to get their price range and availability. This is the point in my engagement when I learned that I might be the only insane Type-A bride with a long engagement in the entire Albany, NY area because every photographer I contacted still had our date open. Score!

In fact, some of the photographers sent me a one liner saying something like, "Thanks for your interest, but we are not currently booking 2012 weddings. Please contact us again in 2011." Psssshhh. Who did they think they were dealing with? I have a list of 30 photographers in front of me and you just got yourself crossed off. BOOM.

Okay, in reality I felt really disappointed that so many photographers weren’t booking 2012 weddings yet, but it did totally help me shorten my list.

This is also around  the same time when I learned that I have a champagne taste on a beer budget. I suffered from major, major sticker shock while researching photographers.

The first time this happened was after reviewing the site of a photographer who came highly recommended to us from a few different sources. After looking through his photos a few times I knew I had to have him for our wedding.

Seriously. Here is his page. Go look at his photos. You will be coerced into booking with him even if you're not planning a wedding. I swear, that's how good he is. 

I immediately sent him off an email telling him I was interested in his services and went about my business thinking damn, that was easy.  

 

Image via Staples

Then the response came in. With his prices. Now he doesn't advertise them on his site so I'm not going to publish them here, but let's just put it this way. This was the first professional photography quote I had received and it literally made me curl up in a ball and cry.

That is sticker shock my friends.

As I continued my search I began to realize that while my dream photographer was at the higher end of the spectrum (as well he should be, he's incredibly talented), he actually wasn't that far off from others that we looked into.

In the end, my eyes were bigger than my budget and we settled for a less expensive, but still amazingly talented photography team. We click with them so well and I’m so glad that we found them. We've already had our engagement session with them and I can't wait to work with them on our wedding day.

By the way, that list of 30 photographers? Yeah that's not a joke. I had a crazy spreadsheet going and everything. Now I know I'm not the only one, so stick with me and I'll explain how we narrowed down my ridiculous list of photographers.

What kind of sticker shock did you run into while planning your wedding?