I was married in late Nov'09. It has been 6 months and I am still trying to resolve my wedding photos. Before we left for our honeymoon in Feb, we received our completed video. There was a photo moment section which made us realize that we were missing ALL the wedding party and family shots at the ceremony altar.
I immediately contacted my photographer right away via email. He was out of the country due to a family emergency so I told him let's regroup when we are both back. I detailed very specifically in my email what we are missing. He promised to look into our case immediately upon his return.
He has been back for three weeks and told us he would call us. But when we didn't hear from him during the first week, we called and wrote him. He then asked us to meet at his home on Weds. I reiterated again via email that he had promised to look into our missing photos and explained again the situation. He assured me he understood and would take care of it. My husband even called the day of the meeting to confirm. Basically it was a waste of our time. He had no clue what we were looking for so we had to explain everything again. We kept very calm as our objective is to find the missing photos.
This is when we realize what a fraud he is. For a photographer with over 15 yrs of experience, I was appalled to hear him confess that he never reviewed our wedding photos. Basically he entrusted the memory cards to an assistant who downloaded into his own computer and burned cd copies. So my photographer did not even have the back-up at his home. He said he needed to check with his assistant who by the way is no longer working for him. He promised to call us back the next day which was yesterday, Thursday.
Needless to say, he never did. My husband had to follow up 3 times. Each time, the photographer told us he wasn't able to get in touch and became very evasive when we asked for his ex-assistant's number so we can follow up. I finally lost it with him last night and left him a very angry and emotional voicemail about the situation. I wanted to convey how important these family and wedding party photos are to us.
He called this morning and all of a sudden, he apparently got a hold of the ex-asst. He assured us that we would all meet tonight and we will sort this out. The ex-asst will bring along his back-up. I cannot even begin to tell you how angry I am right now. My photographer called at 6pm and said the ex-asst will come by hs house after work. So we waited. 8pm came and nothing so we called the photographer and said what is going on??? He continued to say he's coming he's coming. Finally, my husband got fed up and went to his house. The ex-asst did not show up until 9:30pm. I stayed at home to let my husband handle it.
My photographer DID NOT explain anything to the ex-asst. The guy shows up without any idea of what is going. So my husband had to explain the whole situation and showed them physically the burned cds we received and what we meant by missing altar photos. Now my photographer is going away this weekend and won't be back until Tues. The ex-asst took down our name and wedding date and promised to look into this.
I don't know what to believe any more. I have never encountered such unprofessionalism in my life. I feel trapped even though we have a signed contract. My husband says we shouldn't take any drastic measures such as legal action until we know for certain whether we can find the missing photos. To this day, my photographer has not apologized for the delays and irresponsibility. My husband raised our concerns again tonight and was basically brushed off by my photographer, saying that we should let the ex-asst do his job and we'll see what happens.
Has anyone encountered such issues with their photographers and can offer some advice? I feel as though I am going crazy. No one seems to understand how important these photos are and that we can never get them back if they are missing.