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Illinois-Chicago

WARNING: Bella Pictures

I used to post on here when I was planning my wedding - so I wanted to warn all of you lovely ladies about Bella Pictures. First, I should say that at the beginning & through the wedding I was thrilled with everything. They did a great job. Our actual photographer - David Banks (not employed by Bella Pictures - they hire photogs like independent contractors to work events) was FANTASTIC. We LOVE our pictures. Long story short - I HATE our album. They do online proofing, and I made two rounds of changes, and approved the 3rd & final draft. When we got our album in the mail it was all wrong. They made several mistakes, and I believe they printed the album off the second draft - not the third. Now they claim there was no third draft - but I very clearly remember making two sets of changes, because I actually felt kind of bad for being so picky. If you are already using Bella Pictures - just make sure you see what the cover of your album will look like (ours is awful - and I never asked to see a real album to see what our cover would look like - shame on me). Print EVERY draft they send you and every version you approve - find a way to archive everything you do online or something - because now they are refusing to fix our album. The offer is to let them redesign up to 4 pages, at $100/hour. I don't trust their designers to do a good job - the layout is very bad, and it doesn't look anything like the online proof - the proof didn't show that there would be 5 inches of blank, black space around each photo, etc. Be careful with Bella Pictures!

Re: WARNING: Bella Pictures

  • edited December 2011
    these negative reviews on here tend to get removed by the knot. i would make sure you put this review on yelp, wedding wire and project wedding just to be sure people who are looking for companies and double checking up on reviews are aware of what happened to you
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  • gkb0910gkb0910 member
    Knottie Warrior 1000 Comments
    edited December 2011
    liz-theknot changed their policy regarding negative reviews.  The company can email to tell their side of the story, but brides are allowed to post them now.  I'd hope it won't be removed since it's not violating any rules now. However, PP is right.  Post this on other sites too.
    Kailyn Jean Born August 6, 2011 (3w6d early) imageBaby Birthday Ticker Ticker Planning Bio
  • edited December 2011
    sorry that happened to you. can you get your album done elsewhere? i looked them up and they do get bad reviews quite a bit.http://www.yelp.com/biz/bella-pictures-chicago
  • edited December 2011
    gkb is right--you're allowed to review negative or positive now. Just know that if the vendor sees it, they may respond as well.Sorry that you aren't happy with your book! =(
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  • edited December 2011
    i think that these reviews are only search-able for a few weeks, so it really is worth posting this review on the yelp site so that future brides know about what happened.
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  • HoosierKateHoosierKate member
    First Comment
    edited December 2011
    Thanks for the tip! I did check out Yelp.com and put a review (a rather long one, oops) there. To be fair - they weren't all bad - just the album was bad for me. But I have seen much worse after my wedding - brides whose photogs showed up late and missed them walking down the aisle, etc. A bad album isn't the worst thing - at least we have incredible pictures! I am still going back and forth with them on the album - if they at the very least correct their mistakes, I'll probably keep it and just do a second album on iPhoto or something. But... our photographer, David Banks was contracted by Bella - he was phenomenal! I would recommend him to anyone. He is based in Evanston. Thanks ladies!
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