Advise please - fiance wants to hire his friend as the wedding photographer?

[JessiTaylor]

Im sorry i wasnt sure where to put this - i guess its related to the etiquette of hiring a friend to do a job as a professional, what you can expect and how to treat them (nicely of course, but more as a friend...or a professional)

 

My fiance has a close friend who used to be an avid amateur photographer and hes recently become a professional (maybe a year/year and half ago). He does have some experience shooting weddings and we've seen his pictures and they are nice but i have some concerns

- would it be better to go for somebody with more experience
- if he does the wedding then he cant enjoy the wedding as our guest - no alcohol, pretty much no dancing as he'll be working, no socialising at the event (well, i mean obviously he can talk to people but will have to be available for pictures)
- im just not sure its a good idea to mix friendship with business, particularly with something as important as a wedding - if something goes wrong its more awkward to handle than with a stranger and i dont know if i would feel able to treat him as a professional rather than a friend (telling him what i want, complaining if he does something wrong etc etc)

my parents paid for an engagement photographer and the photos turned out pretty bad which is why my fiance is concerned about hiring a photographer we dont know personally. we would of course pay him, but he gives a friends discount and is definitely less expensive than cancun photographers

so how do i decide?!

 

 

[Bride2012]

Where are you getting married? I would do research and look on here for photos that have been done. We were lucky with all of our photographers, I did a LOT of research before deciding.

[JessiTaylor]

in a year...i was doing some research online until fiance became pretty adamant he wanted to hire his friend!

 

Thing is, for example if a professional was standing aruond chatting and doing nothing, id have no qualms about saying "hey you, youre here to work get on with it". With a friend (even if as hired as a professional) i really dont think i could!

[Bride2012]

Exactly! We bought a Nikon D5100 for our reception and cut out the photographer, so we had a pro photographer for getting ready/wedding/group photos after.  For the reception everyone was excited and caught moments of our recpetion. We got a lot of great photos and some video.  But everyone joined in, so it wasn't just one person taking photos.

 

Husband had the same idea and wanted his mom to photograph the reception...i said NO, for the same reasons, what if she's talking/drinking/socializing, there would be moments that were missed that I would never get back...

[JessiTaylor]

 

the other thing is we would have to pay for his flight/hotel (granted its a domestic flight) so i dont see its going to save any money! i mean he's either a guest or an employee so to speak, cant ask him to spend his own money to get to a wedding that he wont enjoy (or would basically be earning nothing!). sigh.  id rather just have a pro and the friend bringing his camera and taking occasional photos as a guest (which he does anyway...with top of the range camera).

 

thing is fiance hasnt asked for many wedding things...so i feel bad rejecting one of his few ideas. im going to try more subtle persuasion i think =)

[Kristy28]

We also debated with this. My fiancee is a photographer and one of his friends (who is also a photographer) offered to shoot our wedding if we just paid for his trip. We considered it for a bit because with him we knew what we were getting but in the end decided not to. If something goes wrong or we arent happy with the pics it could make the friendship akward. We booked a professional and our friend will take pics and enjoy himself.

[anichols8]

I have to agree with everyone else.  It hits even closer to home for us because my fiance's sister and brother in law are professional photographers, specializing in weddings and my mom was adamantly opposed.  You want to make sure you have someone that draws a clear line as far as professionalism and responsibility are concerned.  I think family/friends may blur that distinction, even if it's unintentional.

[JessiTaylor]

 

we debated this the other day and fiance really doesnt see the problem!! he also doesnt agree that we would have ot pay our friends hotel and flight which i think is silly! "please pay to attend our wedding...but youll be working and wont enjoy it"

 

eugh. im looking at photographers anyway and im tempted to just book on and present it as a done deal. but ill work on the persuading first!

[Branya2012]

If your gut is telling you not to have your friend do the photography, then the best advice is probably just to go with your gut! You gave several reasons that you want to have a professional (a "professional" you already had was bad but someone who speciailizes in destination weddings might be better, you don't think it's fair to pay for your friend's flight, etc., you want him to be able to enjoy the wedding, to name a few) so maybe that's the road you should take! Hopefully you can find a nice balance between what you and your fiancee both want. Maybe you could suggest a trash the dress shoot, or getting ready pictures for the friend to take for a reasonable price instead of paying for his whole trip. Will he be going to the wedding even if he wasn't taking pictures? Because if he is, then that seems like a very unfair price to pay for him to take pictures when he was already going to be there.

 

We have newly "professional" photographers in my family that we had asked to take our wedding pictures (I use the term loosely because at the time, they were not as good as they thought they were. They have gotten better, but still). There was a huge misunderstanding and at the end of the day they wanted too much money, especially based on their experience, so we are having a friend that is also a newly semi-professional photographer (about 1.5 years experience by the time our wedding rolls around). The main reason we chose him is that he is an awesome, easy going guy that doesn't expect to be paid a dime for his work. So instead of having our snobby family take pics for a relatively expensive price, we are having our friend take pictures and we are paying him a decent amount, especially considering he doesn't expect to be paid at all. And the snobby family may, or may not, still be guests at the wedding.

 

Good luck! I'm sure you will work something out!

[JayKay]

I can relate to this.   My husbands best friends wife is a photographer.  She was fairly new to photography when we announced we were getting married.  My husband was adament that we use her as our photographer for our wedding.  Its not that I dont beleive she is capable of beautiful photographs, its just that she was brand new at photography, and we felt like she would be spending her entire day taking pictures rather then enjoying the wedding events.  I would say maybe make a compromise.  What about hire another photographer you decide upon after some research and suggest using your fiances friend for say trash the dress photos or just a couples shoot, rather then your actual wedding day.