Not usually the one to post but I’m getting incredibly frustrated at how unprofessional my wedding photographer is and need your opinions.
We got married July of this year and booked our wedding photographer many months prior to our big day. He is very well known and respected for his work in Toronto, especially amongst the Korean- Canadian community, so we didn’t mind signing a contract with him. Our contract outlined that our photos would be deliver by October 2022, exactly 3 months from our wedding day.
Working with him was seemingly fine before and during our wedding- he even gave us a few polaroid “preview shots” before he left, which we were happy about. We didn’t receive any other preview gallery after our wedding and just assumed that the 10 polaroids he gave us were the “previews”. Then came our contractual delivery date in October, when we waited for our photos but did not receive anything. It was couple of days after when we went through his instagram, we found a general instagram post that was captioned that wedding turnaround time would be now 4-5 months. We were disappointed that we did not get an email update about this, but understood that he was extra busy this year.
At 4.5 months, in November, I decided to reach out to him, first apologizing him for bothering him, the asking him if we could have an ETA for the photos as we were planning on using the photos as our Christmas cards this year. He replied back saying that our photos were being finalized and asked for a “couple of days” to review the photos, which we were totally fine with because we thought that timeline was reasonable. I really trusted that our photos were being worked on and told him that I did not mean to rush him and that he could take time reviewing them, as I thought this process would be a couple of days as he said, at most 1-2 weeks.
Then came December, already 5 months after our wedding day (which was apparently his new turnaround time) I had zero updates, so I reached out to him again reminding him that we had one week before Christmas to print photos and send them. (This is +2 weeks after our last email when he said he was reviewing our photos). He replied saying that we would send us a preview gallery (??) by the end of the day and send us the full gallery by the end of the month. We didn’t understand why he was sending us a preview gallery now, 5 months after our wedding, but thought it was better than nothing... But what’s frustrating is that he did not end up sending us the preview gallery either. Neither did he give us any updates.
I’m just getting so frustrated literally having to literally chase him down for the photos and service that we paid for, and being completely out of the loop as to what is going on with the photos. My friends who got married in September have already received their wedding photos and I have no idea when he is ACTUALLY going to deliver our photos because none of what he says seem to have any weight.
Wedding planning was supposed to be the difficult part, but I’m struggling with post-wedding because of this and I’m just so over it. At this point, I am considering asking for a partial refund and was wondering if anyone has any experience similar to mine?
tl;dr: photographer won't give us our photos or updates 5 months after our wedding
