Since the day we got engaged we have had a total of 3 friends or family offer to take photos for us. 2 of these friends we have no intention of inviting to the wedding and the 3rd is a cousin who is on the invite list. The 2 friends keep sending me FB messages with their specials and deals and sample photos. I keep kindly stating that we haven't decided what we are doing about a photographer yet.
With the cousin, we messaged her the other day to find out her address so we can send her a save the date. She responds with her address and then the question "Why aren't I doing the photography for this?" I never knew that she was a professional photographer so we respond "Are you going to do it for free lol?" no answer. She then says "Name your price" we respond again "Free lol" she then says "you shop around and I will give you half price of what you want as my gift to you"
What do I do?
Re: Friends and Family as Photographers
We don't encourage this for two reasons:
1) Guests should be just that-guests-and not working the wedding. If they're working, they could get distracted by personal interactions and situations and forget to do their job properly. Or, they could get so into their jobs that they fail to interact with their own relatives and friends in appropriate ways. There's a story on the Etiquette Hell website about an MOG who catered the reception. As soon as the ceremony was over, she changed out of her ceremony outfit into a T-shirt and shorts and spent the entire time in the kitchen to supervise her staff, emerging only to dance the mother-son dance with the groom, while everyone else was dressed up.
2) If things go wrong service-wise, this impacts on the personal relationship, often causing it to end or badly damaging it, because the couple gets stuck with no recourse with service failures because of the lack of a legally enforceable written, signed, and dated contract between them and the service provider that sets out terms and conditions for the provision of the services, usually because the service provider promised them the services as a "gift." Sadly this happens all too often.
So, while you had a lovely experience, we as a forum aren't going to endorse asking relatives and friends who would normally be guests to work the wedding because of the two things above.