I got married on 11/26, which is now basically 5 months ago.
For our wedding we splurged on a somewhat expensive photographer- about ~$2500, which is a lot for this area. The reason we splurged is this particular photographer came to us very highly recommended, we loved his work, and he's one of the most (if not THE most) popular wedding photographers in this region.
Cut to today and we haven't seen a single photo. He did warn me when we first met that it takes him a long time to turn around the photos because he individually edits every single one and gives us every photo he and his assistant take over the course of an 8 hour day. I stupidly did not inquire any further or get anything in writing about how long exactly he meant.
Immediately following the wedding we e-mailed him, thanked him for being with us on our big day, and asked about how long we could expect it to be before we got the photos back- no response. At that point we somewhat arbitrarily decided that him saying it takes him a while probably meant we shouldn't expect them for at least three months, so that's when I contacted him next.
At that point I started to get a little nervous because he was very hard to get in touch with- three or four e-mails went unanswered before we started calling him daily, at which point (after three or four days) he did finally e-mail us back. He explained he had temporarily put our project on hold because he had two emergency jobs that he had to bump in front of us, due to terminal illnesses in the families (in one case it was the father of the bride, in the other the grandfather of the bride). He also said he really couldn't give us an estimate of when he'd be done with our photos because these things take time, he personally edits each photo blah blah blah. He said we should let him know if there were any specific shots we wanted to see, and we asked him to just pick a few of his favorites and send them to us. He never did.
About a month and a half later I decided to try a different approach and e-mailed him asking for a set list of four pictures (one of me and H, one with me and my BMs, and one with each of us and our mothers). He responded very promptly and said he'd be happy to send them over the weekend. Well, two weekends have passed and I e-mailed him again yesterday asking what was up, no response yet.
So basically I'm kind of starting to get upset because it's been almost half a year and I haven't seen a single professional picture of my wedding. On the one hand I know he is a very in-demand photographer and he did warn us it could take a while. It's very hard for me to believe he's scamming us or has lost our photos or something, simply based on his sterling professional reputation in this town. On the other hand I'm sketched out by how hard he's been to communicate with... and I mean we DID get married at the end of November, which is supposed to be the off-season for wedding photographer so I would have thought he'd be finished by now. I also think it's weird he hasn't been able to send us a single sample photo or "first look", because I kind of thought that was standard practice for wedding photographers.
Has anyone else had a photographer take this long? I guess I would feel better if I knew this kind of delay isn't completely unheard of. Is it time for me to start getting more irate with him or do I keep playing nice and hope that I catch more flies with honey than vinegar? HELP.