NEW YORK — Like all brides, Elana Goldin had high hopes for her wedding photos and video.
“I loved their images,” she said of the company picked by her dad and future mother-in-law. “They were award-winning. They were in a ton of magazines. I really liked the vibe of the owner.”
The feeling didn’t last.
The photographer, who showed up 45 minutes late with a team of two, wasn’t the owner, as the company had promised. She was someone Goldin had never spoken to. The fill-in had a bad attitude from the start, said Goldin, who lives in Chicago and got married last May in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin.
Among other things, the photographer criticized Goldin’s bridal shoes, jewelry and perfume as second rate for traditional close-up shots, and she picked apart the bouquets without permission to get images before the ceremony.
“She and the florist got into a fight. There was friction from the moment she walked in,” Goldin said.
Looking back, Goldin said she would have done a few things differently.
We asked wedding planners and photographers to also weigh in on how they think photo disaster can be averted.
Goldin wishes she had been more assertive. She had provided a shotlist ahead of time, but the photographer assigned to the bride and bridesmaids started making demands on where she wanted Goldin to pose.
“I’m in my dress and she said let’s take a picture in the shower, because it was a very big, glamorous shower. My sister was like, absolutely not. Not happening,” Goldin recalled.
At the venue, the photographer insisted on taking photos outside. The weather was rainy and windy, and the lighting was dreary.
“It was disgusting outside. My dress got all dirty at the bottom. My hair starts frizzing. The bridesmaids came out and our hair was blowing everywhere. The pictures were awful,” Goldin said.
You love them dearly. But New Jersey-based wedding planner Danielle Rothweiler of Rothweiler Event Design advises against it.
“I always tell my couples, stop hiring your friends and family because if something goes wrong, think of that conversation that you’re going to have. No one wants that,” she said.
One client took up an uncle on his offer to shoot her wedding as his gift. He missed half the shots and didn’t understand the importance of timing. He also spent a good amount of time just being a guest and not taking pictures at all.
“She never said anything. The pictures weren’t great,” Rothweiler said. “I have a wedding coming up this year and half the vendor list is friends and family and I’m terrified. I’m so scared about it.”
Michelle Jackson, who owns the photo vendor Bambino International based in Cincinnati, Ohio, said some basic questions about equipment can go a long way.
Make sure your photographers have back up camera bodies and other crucial equipment of the same quality as their primary gear, she said. Cameras with dual slots for SD cards or XQD cards are optimal.
“Everything’s being copied onto two cards,” she said. “The worst disaster for a photographer is you have no pictures at all because of equipment failure. Couples don’t think about that.”
In the same vein, San Francisco wedding photographer Oscar Urizar, the proprietor of Red Eye Collection in San Francisco, said couples should ensure they have the rights to personal use of their photos. That allows them to print, share and display them for non-commercial purposes.
“I started in the film industry. If you didn’t get your negatives, you couldn’t print your photos. It’s kind of that same thinking,” he said.
There’s nothing more chaotic than organizing group shots at weddings. The larger the wedding, the more chaotic it can be.
Wedding planner Tirusha Dave, founder of the luxury market Bravura Brides, serves South Asian couples around the world with guest lists up to 300 or more.
She puts together a shareable document and asks couples to list every person expected in each group shot, but she doesn’t stop there. She has them designate one person to serve as wrangler. The wrangler must know every person in the group by sight so they can be chased down if necessary.
“I tell my couples, I’m really great at what I do but I don’t know your second cousins, your extended aunts and uncles,” Dave said.
Each group is assigned a number that’s announced when it’s time to gather.
Dallas-area photographer April Pinto, founder and co-owner of April Pinto Photography, has a stable of shooters. They can juggle up to four weddings a week.
They sink or swim by how well the timeline is observed. Not an easy task, Pinto said, “when you have a coordinator timing you and the mother of the groom who wasn’t on the Zoom call making her own agenda and stressing out the bride. We’re in the middle of all of that.”
But that’s just part of the challenge. The other part?
The rowdy bridesmaid, Pinto said. She’s somebody who might have had a bit too much Champagne and feels like she should be in charge.
“If a bridesmaid is feeling a little too spicy, we try to give her tasks,” Pinto said. “I find that keeping people in general engaged and involved can go a long way. You can turn all that stress into a happy time.”
