...photographer break-up PART 2.

since i got engaged last october, i started my wedding research online. the internet has been my primary source for all ideas, vendors, and advice. since i'm the first person in my immediate group of friends to get married, i didn't have anyone located in the bay area to help me, and therefore the 'net soon became my best friend for all things wedding related.

i became a frequent visitor of theknot, which is the biggest website for anything and everything about weddings. they have forums on there as well, which, depending on the type of posts you read, can be quite informative. so, last week i decided to vent about my photographer qualms on the northern california board, just to ask the advice of other brides like me and see if i was stupid to trip about that vendor or if my feelings were justified.

lo and behold, i come to find that i was not alone when it came to my dealings with the vendor. i hadn't even posted her name in my original post, and i had people already call her out and know who i was talking about as they had similar experiences with her! there were 3 others like me, and then another one that posted on this blog! that made me so upset! i posted a review about her on yelp that night, for no other reason than to inform others like me about the experience i went through. i only spoke about my dealings with her on my review, and in my opinion i wasn't negative at all, save for one little part where i sarcastically mentioned that she does 60 weddings a year (she quoted this number), which is like 4x the amount of any other professional photographer. i even had my brother, who is always able to step out the situation and give me an objective perspective, read the review to make sure it wasn't mean.

the photographer calls me the next morning. on my cell phone. (i guess she still had my number from our previous dealings?) she tells me that my post was mean and that she couldn't understand how i could write that review, and that she was upset about it because she felt like it was a personal attack on her. i told her that those were just my opinions and that i was only commenting about our business interactions, not her as a person. to make a long story short, i apologized to her if i made her feel bad, but that the review stated my honest opinions about what happened. i felt like others, like me, that do all their vendor research online should have this sort of information at their disposal.

since then, i checked her website twice, and each time her prices were higher than the last. the first time i checked, her price went up a couple hundred dollars. this last time i checked, it went up by $900. she now states that her increase in prices is due to the fact that she wants to do less weddings next year so that she can spend more time focusing on her clients. good for her.

because i'm the type of person i am, i can't help but feel bad that i made her feel the way she felt. however, as a consumer i have to be honest when i say that customer service and professionalism should be #1 in the business world. when dealing with vendors for our wedding, david refuses to work with anyone who he even gets a bad vibe from! and who can blame him? when you are shelling out so much money (not to mention, faith) for certain services, who wouldn't want only the best?

with that said, i am happy to say that we found another potential photographer to work with. she's actually from socal and she's flying up next week for a wedding. her flight comes in late in the evening and she still wanted to meet with us! we've been emailing back and forth and she's been very professional and straight up in our conversations. i'm really excited to meet with her, and once everything is settled i'll post more about her.

for now, here's a teaser! ;)



a million points for those that can name the celebrity in the first pic and the location of the second! welcome to the good life, indeed! i think it's a sign...

too good to be true.

our photographer broke up with us today. :(

from the beginning, i always had this feeling inside that she was too good to be true. she was cheap, and we were going to get an engagment session and trash the dress along with the wedding day coverage, all for under $3K.

well, we met with her a few weeks ago and the feeling inside grew slightly worse. she's young and energetic, but somewhat unprofessional. david and i pretty much led the meeting as she just waited for us to ask questions instead of telling us about her services. she had to meet with another client after us, so when we were done she pulled out a scrappy piece of paper that had scribbles on it out of her back pocket and read the name outoud, then told us that she forgets the names of her clients sometimes. when i emailed her the next day to tell her we wanted to book her, she emailed back with a "i forgot to tell you i charge $100 for travel fees to burlingame" message. um, $100 for a 16-mile (20 minute) drive? ooookay. well, it would still be only $2700, so david and i agreed even though we didn't think that it was necessary. i was very tempted to tell her i'd pick her up myself.

i then noticed she increased her prices on her website by $200. so, i made sure that she would only charge us for the price she verbally quoted us during our meeting. luckily, she agreed. she said that she'd email us a contract by last friday. well, tuesday rolls around and still nothing. so, i emailed her to remind her and she then sends over a contract. i'm not a lawyer or anything, but the contract itself was pretty sparse, and there were all sorts of typos. the bad feeling starts to increase.

well, i get an email this morning saying that her cousin is having a wedding on the same day as we are and she "just found out." i'm trying to believe her and give her the benefit of the doubt, but given the feeling i get from her and my interactions with her, she seems a little sketchy.

i can't pretend i'm not disappointed and that i don't care, because i am and i do. but this is the way things go, and sometimes you can't help how things plan out. luckily for us, it's still somewhat early in the game and i can still have our pick of photographers. at least she didn't bail on us a few months before the wedding! unluckily for us, we're probably going to spend more for photography now. which means less money for other things.

she did offer us a free day-after shoot. however, given the circumstances should i even believe her? should i get my hopes up once again, only to be let down when the time comes? i don't know...is it worth it to still try and work with her?

this is soooo cute!

some parts are kind of freaky, but overall very cute!

See more funny videos at CollegeHumor

what a steal!

seeing as though photography is david's "hobby of the moment," we spent a lot of time researching potential photographers for our wedding. in the beginning, we quickly fell in love with photographers whose names have saturated the wedding industry for many years.

jessica claire

gene higa



apertura

we drooled over the fine art of these pictures and spent much time viewing slideshows of their work. this was before we even thought of our ceremony or reception, before we settled on a budget, before we realized that the rates of the photographers above started at $10K. wow. so, the search began again for great photographers under $10K. we did find a couple:

ed pingol

lisa + james

we actually met the two husband and wife teams above at a a bridal show many months ago. both were really friendly and had a lot to offer. unfortunately, we decided that $6K+ was still too much to pay for photography. i knew that there were many photographers out on the market that we could potentially afford, but because we are so picky about photography i wasn't sure we'd be able to find one of our liking.

one day i was browsing the boards at weddingbee, a blog i frequently visit during my planning and research, and stumbled upon a post where someone was in search of photographers around the $2K range in the bay area. perfect! this was right up my alley. i followed the directions of the posters who gave their advice and came upon the website and blog of erica berger.

we met with her earlier today at a coffee shop in the city. her most expensive package is $2,600 and that includes an engagement session and 8 hours the day of the wedding and a trash the dress session, which is her specialty! i believe the reason why her prices are so competitive is because she is only a year old in the wedding photography business. she's quite young, but very hip and down for anything. we got along great with her and are excited to start working with her.

with an engagement shoot lined up in the next few months, i really better start taking my workout up a notch!

one year from today...

the double d's will be getting married! :) can't you just feel the excitement? i sure can...

i've been a a blogging hiatus for quite some time now due to various reasons. first, i'm enjoying my summer way too much! secondly, david and i kept going back and forth between where and when to have our wedding. due to the house hunt we had to put wedding plans on hold, and were seriously considering having a destination wedding in hawaii (hence, the pictures in the previous post). we have so many friends and family we want to share our day with, but on a limited budget we couldn't justify inviting everyone we wanted to. we thought that the only way to save money would be to have a small wedding outside the bay area.

after doing some research, we found that while getting married in hawaii may be cheaper for us, our guests would have to pay a whopping $700+ to go at this time of the year. that's double what we paid a few years ago. now, that figure may not be so bad for some families, but for ours, it's a little steep. some of our closest family members seemed hesitant when we told them. it's not that they didn't want to go, but they have families and responsibilities of their own. plus, logistically it would be extremely difficult to plan a wedding without being able to check out the venue and various vendors. i also started having flashbacks of what it was like to travel to vegas with a big family in tow...yikes.

so, on a random day we set out to see if maybe, just maybe, we could afford to have our wedding in a nice venue close-by. we knew that our guest list was going to be cut in half, and that we needed a venue with a reasonable minimum revenue for the day we chose. our previous hotel's minimum revenue was $30K...no matter how many people you choose to invite. that's just for food and beverages, people! luckily, we happen to stumble upon a hotel that we drive by nearly every week -- a hotel that for some reason never made the list. and, it was there that we found our venue.

Hyatt Regency San Francisco Airport

when we first walked in, we were impressed by the atrium and its grandness.

we were directed promptly to the catering manager who asked us several questions about our event. after determining the number of guests we would be expecting, she led us to the Poolside Pavilion, which is actually a permanent tent outdoors, alongside their pool! we walked in and really fell in love with the space.





the tent is fully equipped with A/C (though, who really uses that in the bay?!) and a heater. they allow the cocktail reception to take place by the pool area. what really sold it was david's reaction to the place. he was impressed by the manager that was showing us around (perhaps even more so due to the fact that 20 minutes beforehand i told him about another hotel lady that laughed at me when i requested to see their ballroom this far in advance of our wedding. your loss, lady!) who was extremely professional and knowledgeable, and he really felt like the outdoor tent was unique and beautiful. it has an "outdoorsy" vibe without feeling like you're in the country. plus, their minimum revenue wasn't all that bad, especially since we are having it on a Friday to save us a few grand. david and i both walked away from the hotel with our decision already made. alleluia.

so, with the church booked already, the signing of our venue contract next week, and a meeting with our prospective photographer also next week, things are slowly starting to become real.

are you getting excited yet?

hmmm...

decisions, decisions, decisions. i really dislike being an indecisive person. *sigh*

the most expensive day...

a couple weeks ago, david and i met with our first (potential) vendor for our wedding: Sofitel San Francisco Bay. we've known for quite some time that we wanted this hotel for our reception, and we've been in casual contact with the catering manager over there since our engagement. we finally had a formal meeting together where we discussed some questions we had about the facilities and banquet options. at some point we realized that we severely underbudgeted for our reception...by like, almost 50%. we were working off the prices from their regular reception menu not knowing that they had a wedding reception menu that listed totally different prices. sadly, we left the hotel feeling somewhat unaccomplished and, once again, trying to figure out how we are going to pay for the most expensive day of our lives.

see, we've tentatively decided to go through with trying to purchase a home sometime in the near future. the market right now is really good for buyers, and in trying to take advantage of that we're running into a few problems. i know that david and i will eventually figure this all out -- it's just a matter of readjusting everything and reworking the numbers. in the meantime, i've been trying to figure out ways to cut down the cost of our wedding. here's what i came up with:

1. hiring just a videographer that can freeze video shots and turn them into photos instead of hiring a photographer. we'd have my cousin (a photographer just entering the wedding world) take photographs.
2. forget about the chivari chairs i would kill to have. ($8-$10/chair)
3. have my wedding dress made instead of buying it.
4. have a family friend do the flowers (i'm not so into her style of design, but she won't charge us for labor, just the flowers)
5. rethink our initial desire of paying for all 14 of our wedding party's attire (sorry guys...=( )
6. forgetting about our honeymoon
7. cutting down our guestlist

the latter 2 i really hope we don't have to do, but those 2 options are probably the ones that are going to save us the most money, especially cutting down our guestlist. i've spoken to so many people that wished they could have invited more guests to their wedding. every part of me just wants all the people that have touched our lives in some way to be able to celebrate with us, after all community is something david and i identify so greatly with. i guess we'll just have to cross that bridge when we come to it.