My wedding photographer completely missed our photos! Help!

LDaronne answers your questions trying not to be too out of line.

La Daronne is the queen of not-so-stupid advice, covered with a large dose of more or less subtle humor. Here she is back to help a reader!

The question for Daronne

Dear Daronne,

I got married a few weeks ago. The wedding went well, except for one detail… My photographer. However, I was warned: never entrust this extremely important mission to a loved one… But lo and behold, one of my cousins ​​is passionate about photography and from what I could see on his Instagram account, he was talented. When I told him about the wedding he immediately offered to take care of the photos. We have agreed a fee of 600 euros to be paid in advance. I warned him that if he took on this role he would have to dedicate himself to it. He promised me.

He took care of the ceremony, the reception and the “traditional” couple and group photos. Even though the champagne was flowing freely in the glass, he continued to take photos… We didn’t think anything, except that he spent more time having fun than taking photographs. But we know what a wedding is like, we wait for the interpreters to do their job.

After several weeks of waiting, we received the photos. Except… they suck. Poorly framed, backlit, and the further into the evening the more blurry it becomes. In short, it’s carnage. My husband and I are furious. Not only do we not have a correct memory of this beautiful day, but we feel betrayed and cannot even enjoy this ceremony of which we do not have a correct visual memory.

Help me, dear Daronne!

Vincent

Daronne’s response

My little field glass,

First of all, congratulations! First of all for this wedding, but also for this first struggle as a married couple! At least I hope it’s the first. And the last one. Even if I don’t even put a cent into it.

Before starting this letter, I would like to apologize in advance because I won’t have many solutions to provide you. Don’t blame me, I have a very good reason for this: I can’t turn back time to allow you to make the right decisions. Even though I work there. However, this letter will at least serve one purpose as I will provide general advice to readers who are considering hiring a loved one as a service provider or who want to resolve a dispute with a professional photographer.

Don’t panic, I will continue to scrape away the crusts of dust covering the crumpled apple that acts as my brain, in the hope of finding some comforting advice.

With this perfectly useless introduction, here we are, my kiki!

Don’t entrust your wedding services to amateurs!

It is true that hiring an amateur as a wedding service provider is cheaper. Except that paying less to get nothing still means wasting money. And at a time when we pay 2.69 euros for a kilo of apples, I personally find it completely irresponsible.

Even assuming that the amateur in question is talented enough, we must not forget that a professional activity is above all…. TADAAAAAAM… professional ! That is to say, an activity that involves numerous constraints and whose nature is defined by the customers. We’re not here to film plastic bags fluttering around. And maybe it’s not so bad after all.

This professionalization also implies the mastery of other skills: time management, understanding the customer’s needs (even if this means redefining them beforehand), adaptation… Ultimately, whatever the circumstances, you must be able to provide the agreed service . And in this case the intended performance is gesturing in all directions to make sure you capture the essence of the party. Don’t give in” Come on, you can take a little break to have a drink with us » of your common relatives who do not work.

And now ?

If you had consulted me before hiring your cousin, I would have invited you to at least precisely define the terms of service, and then seal everything with a legal contract. I would have advised you to indicate exactly the number of shots expected in total, but also at each moment. I also encourage you to write what you want and don’t want to appear in your photos and much more. It’s true, you would have looked like big idiots. Which wouldn’t have mattered in the slightest given that the job of a wedding photographer consists precisely in satisfying Groomizillas stressed out. And in this case it would have had the advantage of dissuading your cousin, or of demonstrating the dispute ex post.

Since I assume that no contracts are made in families, I advise you to:

1. Get together with your man to discuss the situation and think together about what you might expect from your cousin (Good news for your boyfriend: now that you are married, your family is his family too. GOOD LUCK!). Compensation? Apologies? Self-lynching live on Instagram?
2. Calmly confront your cousin and explain your grievances, always before asking for the expected compensation. If the cousin is of good will, he will agree to compensate you and apologize. This won’t change the quality of the photos, but it will allow you to take more (see next paragraph) and relieve the feeling of betrayal.
3. To resist the temptation to involve the whole family in this story. Your cousin might apologize. It is also likely that he will brandish excuses whose delirium is equaled only by bad faith and he will blame you for being responsible for this failure. After all, it’s not his fault if you had the bad taste to invite only human beings. That is, disgusting animals, with eyelids often half-closed and whose skin turns pink in the heat of neon lights. Avoid hoarding everything else in the tribe, you will be disappointed. Even in the face of the most obvious injustice, the serenity of the group always takes precedence. You won’t get anything from this except proof that your parents are cowards.

My (other) real advice

If we cannot change the past, the future has yet to be invented. Instead of crying over crappy photos that all the tears in the world would ruin just a little more, you might consider something more festive:

• Create a common photo folder and ask all your guests to add their photos to it. All their photos. Even the drunken selfies and shots of that pigeon taken for reasons that escape us in light of our sobriety. Who knows, there might be some decent photos in the lot.
• Take responsibility for this mediocrity and dare to take life against the grain. Ask your friends and guests (excluding those close to the cursed cousin) to vote for the worst photo and frame it. Create a scrap book horror, edit photos to make them even nastier, ask these same friends to add hateful comments, dare to use cheap stickers. Come on ! Trash everything for me!
• Plan a photo catch-up day with all your friends. Put on your party clothes and find a nice spot (why not go back to the crime scene?). Stock up on cheap bubbly and plastic cups and party. If the cousin has agreed to compensate you, it’s time to hire a professional photographer to capture the moment, otherwise the selfie stick is your friend.

If I sympathize with your misfortune, I can only encourage you to make fun of this problem. Advice to apply throughout your life as a couple. I conclude with this essential teaching that I am happy to offer you as a wedding gift.

Come on, I’ll leave you, I have to write ten pages this afternoon and, like the good professional that I am, I haven’t started yet.

The kiss,

Your Daronne