Bela Pictures or George Street Photography

jomark10

Has anyone met with either or have you heard anything about either one of them?

Golfer09

I met with Bella Pictures and while they were priced right and the rep assured us a 100% guaranteed satisfaction or your money back, we went with another studio since we were told we could not meet our photographer prior to our wedding.

Bella does a blind matching process where you look at pictures and "like" or "dislike" them - then based on your preference of style they match you with a photographer from their network.  It was my impression that Bella's business model is to have a network of freelance photographers at hand and to assign them jobs based on this style selection process.

We were just wary that we would end up with a photographer we hated and felt that was a bit dicey for a once in a lifetime event.  i'm not saying to not go with Bella, but just wanted to explain why we did not go with them. 

We did not meet with George Street.  We ended up going with Gerber + Scarpelli and were very happy with the end result!

mscramuzzo

We are working with George Street. I ABSOLUTELY LOVE our photographer (Janet). She is wonderful, personable, artsy, and fun. We paid the extra money to do our engagement photo session with our photographer and in my opinion it's totally worth it. It takes the stress out of wondering what he/she will be like on the day of the wedding. I have no stress whatsoever that she will do a great job.

However, I feel like their customer service leaves something to be desired. I don't consider myself needy or bridezilla, but I do expect that my emails be answered within a 48 hour time period and had many times that our assigned consultant didn't answer emails to the point that I complained to someone. I believe the issue has been taken care of, but I don't need to have much contact until about a month before the wedding.

All things considered...would I pick George Street again? Probably. We also met with Edward Fox (didn't like their packages) and Studio One (package pricing was good but didn't feel confident about them).

lmg1115

My sister used George Street and absolutely hated them. They also did the blind matching through George Street and onlyb met the photographer the day of the wedding. that makes it really hard to get comfortable with your photographer - especially since they are capturing some very intimate moments.

Their photographer was also very lacking in ideas for posing. I guess it's all in who you get matched up with, but after her experience, I didn't even consider george street.

I LOVE LOVE LOVE Gerber + Scarpelli, gorgeous photographs. Not using them, but we did interview and consider them, and almost went with them!

CASK85

Met with George Street, but we didn't like the way they match you up with a photographer. Their new policy is that after you sign a contract they  have you look at pictures online and based on your responses you get matched with someone - you don't get to pick your photographer. They didn't used to do it that way (we have two friends who used them and go to pick last year), but it really put us off them. It is the biggest investment for the day and we wanted to know who we would be working with before we signed a contract. We ended up with Kara Schultz, and I can't wait to work with her.