How to Book a Wedding Photographer

In the last installment of the Finding a Photographer saga, I talked about the lovely Google doc I'd constructed to organize the dozens of eligible photographers to choose from in the Chicagoland area. After I'd filled in a bunch of photographers (from companies like Timothy Whaley & Associates to individual photographers like Victoria Sprung), I started to realize there wasn't really a need to do any kind of statistical analysis like I did for our venue search. I didn't have to assign a value to each pro and con and calculate which photog would be the approximation of perfect for us because they were mostly...not even close to perfect for us. The ones we could afford didn't offer what we wanted, and the ones who would do what we wanted cost an arm and a coupla leggz.

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Granted, my idea of an arm is like, $10. A leg is maybe $15. I'd pay you to take my first born.

We went from having too many photographers (fo' realz, we had about 40) to no photographer at all. I found myself telling Mr. Unicycle that it was kind of ridiculous for us to expect to get a decent photo package for under $2000. "We're kind of being cheapskates," I told him. "Looks like you just can't find anyone that cheap anymore." (Yeah go ahead and roll your eyes. I know I was an idiot. I mean, that's almost what I spent on my car.) But we kept looking and filling in our Google doc, still not finding anyone under budget. Until...

 

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We found one that was cheap n' easy (as I like to say)! She had a cute website with pretty pictures (they passed Mr. Unicycle's test, anyway), her price was well under budget, and she met every single one of our requirements. That photographer was Jennifer Shaffer Photography, so go check out her site (after you finish reading this post, of course). Here are some of her super cool pics:

  

All photos from Jennifer Shaffer Photography

I was ready to book her on the spot (you'll notice I like to do things without thinking them through too much, {like the time I purchased Bump-Its [no, they don't actually work]}) but Mr. Unicycle convinced me that we needed to meet her first. We met up with Jenn at a Starbucks and talked to her about her wedding packages, her photography style, business philosophy, etc. She showed us some wedding pics she'd taken and went through each one to explain what she liked about it, how she framed it, why she chose the location she chose, and a bunch of other photography lingo that I just smiled and nodded along with. This meeting made me realize just how important it is to meet with vendors ahead of time:

1. Instead of just looking through Jenn's portfolio and seeing beautiful brides and pretty shoe close-ups, I was able to hear directly from her why she took the pictures she took. You are most likely not as surprised as I was to discover the amount of thought that goes into each shot. When I take pictures I just hold up the camera and press the little button thingy.
2. We also learned that Jenn was a really nice, outgoing person, which was a column we hadn't even thought to add to our Google doc. But having a photographer you get along with and like being around is so important (It's true--I've read it on legit wedding blogs before, like this one).

If we hadn't met Jenn first, we wouldn't have learned either of those things! In the car on the way home from Starbucks, I was once again ready to book her on the spot. Mr. Unicycle thought we should try meeting with other photographers first just to make sure we were making the right decision. "But she's perfect!" I whined. After about 3 seconds of me whining, Mr. Unicycle had one of those "oh duh, you're right" moments, and we decided to book her for our wedding date!!!

Do you make impulsive decisions like me? Are you cheap like me? (I had to throw in a little more self deprecation. This post didn't have enough.)