So my fiance and I found our photographer last year (June 2017) through a Facebook page that suggested wedding vendors and services from brides that have had their weddings or are still planning. After looking at this photographer's packages (which were reasonably priced - $1500), reading reviews here (a few reviews, but all positive) and taking a glance at their work, we reached out to enlist their services (two photographers). They were pretty responsive when it came to sending the contract and having us sign it and send out the deposit ($400). I was pretty happy at that point, because it seemed I had been able to check one item off my very long to-do list already.
I sent out an email at the beginning of December requesting a winter engagement shoot. Short(ish) version of the story - it is now the middle of January and they have pushed back the photo shoot twice (mostly last minute) and are not responding when I ask them to confirm a new date. It takes them days, in most cases a week to a week and a half to answer simple questions. However, every time they want to push back the shoot, they send me three or four emails in the span of two days requesting that I tell them it's okay to cancel the shoot and move it to another day. They have suggested dates and then when asked to confirm the suggested dates they then come back and say those dates will not work. (It's too cold being their favourite excuse so far).
The culminating factor that is really upsetting me at the moment? One of the photographers added me as a friend on Facebook upon signing the contract in June. I think she either forgot that she added me as a friend or simply doesn't care because this past weekend when the shoot we were supposed to have - the one that has been rescheduled twice now - was cancelled because "something came up" the next day the photographer posted pictures and a huge caption which said she'd been in the workshop all day with a friend working on personalized sippy cups for her upcoming trip down south with a group of people. To say I was enraged is accurate. Our emails to confirm a new date for the photo shoot have still gone unanswered. Wanting to provide benefit of the doubt and thinking she might not read her emails, I reached out to her through Facebook messenger to let her know we needed to confirm the new date. This message (from Saturday evening) has yet to be answered, but status updates from a desktop are popping up on my news feed stamped with time markers after the time I sent the Facebook message. To be clear - all messages (reviewed first by my ever patient fiance, haha) have been polite and professional on our part.
I am at the end of my rope. I was lucky enough to win a free engagement shoot from a contest and the photographer from that photo shoot has been more engaging and has even provided back-up dates for the free engagement shoot should weather be an issue.
All I can think is that if this is the way they are treating us before our wedding, what can we expect on the big day? It's an added stress we don't need, especially since my fiance and I will be out of the country until three days before our wedding here for a ceremony in Turkey.
I'm thinking of cancelling the contract because of this issue and just calling the $400.00 a loss at this point.
What the heck should I do?
