So FH and I are set to be married on October 10th this year and things are going fairly smoothly except the issue of invitations/engagement photos. First of all, let me just say we are on a very tight budget and are cutting corners wherever possible, and when people say "Let me do this, we've pretty much let them run with it, with great results up til this point. We simply do NOT have 2 grand to spend on pictures. FSIL is a graphic design major in college and my sister is a professional photographer. FSIL offered to design our invites, and my sister offered to do our pictures free of charge. She and her husband are fairly well off and are also paying for our wedding cake. Problem #1 is that after sending us a few rough drafts of invites (which we LOVED), FSIL moved back to college and we still have no invites.
Problem #2 We went to take our engagement pictures during the last leg of about 2 months of a horrible summer experience. We'd just driven 13 hours to get to her house to take them, she was in a horrible mood that day, her and her hubby were arguing, we were stressed from the drive and everything that had happened up to that point and it SHOWS in our pictures. We look completely frazzled, and hot...there isn't even a picture where both of us are smiling, mainly because my sister is into the artsy fartsy photography where everyone looks sullen, and of the probably 50 pictures she took, we only received 6 of them, all of them making us look like we're pissed off at someone.....or constipated. I should have taken her art background into consideration, but I figured she would know that I wanted smiling faces for our pics.
So here's the deal. I'm not too worried about FSIL getting upset about us going ahead and designing our own invites, she knows we are on a time crunch and is a really level headed girl. She might be disappointed but she won't freak out I don't think. My darling sister however, is a completely different story. I have someone here that will take some different pics, but I'm so worried about hurting my sister's feelings. I love her work so much, and I would love to have her take some more and us just all be on the same page about what we wanted, but we can't afford to take off work and drive another 13 hours to see her...probably with the same result. She already feels insulted because she feels like I don't come see her enough, but she doesn't understand that my budget just doesn't have as much flex room for travel as hers does. She's kind of the type of person that will do anything for anyone...but it tends to come with strings. If I do this for you, you have to be my best friend, etc, etc, etc. I just don't know what to do about this whole situation. We really need to get those invites sent out pronto, and we'd planned on having pics in them.So ladies, what's the vote? Do I just forgo engagement pics? Or do I have another person take them? What do I say when she asks why we didn't use hers?