finding a wedding photographer

I'm engaged. I'm engaged! Now what?

Wedding planning kicks in. When should we get married? Where do we get married? How big or how small should the wedding be? What photographer to hire? Do we need a videographer? What kind of flowers should we get? How many flowers do we need? What kind of decor? What should our theme be? Do we need a theme? Who do we want to stand by our sides when we do this thing? After the haze of all the questions calmed down we made the first decision: we set a date. You can't make any of the other decisions until you know when you'll get married.

That seems like one of the big decisions, right? Nope. Not for us. We knew we wanted to get married in the fall, we've always known we wanted to marry in the fall. We knew it couldn't be too late in the fall because the leaves could be gone, it could be too cold, it could even be snowy. We knew it couldn't be too early because none of the leaves would be changed yet. We knew.

Now onto one of the most important decisions (for me anyways): Who am I going to hire to capture one of the most important days of our lives? Who will fit our budget? Who can we both agree on? I thought I knew. I thought I knew who I wanted to photograph my wedding, I'd had my eye on them for years actually. They fit our budget, I liked their style, I thought they were damn near perfect. Dylan did not. He didn't feel anything when he looked at their wedding photos.

What? I'm the photographer, this is supposed to be my decision, this is my area, how can he not like them? Now I have to shop around. There are so many different wedding photographers out there. All with different styles that don't fit everyone. Dylan suggested I ask Ian Holmes Photography what he would charge to fly here to shoot our wedding, he really liked him when we were in Paris (clearly) and thought he might be a good fit. Don't get me wrong, he would have been a good fit, but to have someone fly from Paris to Minnesota for one day to shoot a wedding? I couldn't imagine what something like that would cost. 

A few weeks had gone by, I emailed many photographers, talked to some photographer friends, googled wedding photographers, and finally, I found one. One that I loved, but I was too scared to tell Dylan. He was a tad out of our budget... So I presented it as just a photographer I stumbled across on Pinterest when I was looking for wedding inspiration that I liked (which was true). I showed him a few galleries and he instantly was like "that's the one." "This one is way better than the other one you showed me," he said. Okay I thought, awesome, I love this one too. 

We met with Gene late January to discuss packages, pricing, details, and just get a feel for him. The meeting went great. This was the one, price didn't really matter anymore. Your wedding photos are on of the only things you get to keep from your wedding day forever, the investment is worth it.

Then my transmission goes out. My freaking transmission in my 2011 Mitsubishi goes out. Are you freaking kidding me? How could this happen? Why does this have to happen now? We just got back from an expensive vacation, we are wedding planning, why, and the icing on the cake? The price just kept going up. It started at something really affordable (not happy about it, but affordable), then nobody wanted to touch my vehicle (pro tip: don't buy a Mitsubishi). Every mechanic was scared to work on it or wanted $4,000 at least to even freaking touch it. So here we are, stuck in a hole with what seemed like no way out. 

Finally we found a mechanic that would work on my car for a decent price (still way out of my budget, but the best we could do). I let Gene know we hit a road block and that if he had anyone waiting on the date that he should let them take it (obviously, we hadn't paid our retainer yet). He was very understanding, which helped out a lot. A few months went by: I paid for my car, bought a new one (because I'm not dealing with that anymore), and finally saved up the money to book the photographer. 

Nervously I went back to the original booking email he had sent me to see if the date was still available, it was. Finally, something good. I booked him. We booked our dream wedding photographer. We had our engagement session with geneoh late July and it was so much fun. We were comfortable and we love our engagement photos. It's safe to say we definitely picked the right photographer and we can't wait to see our wedding photos!