The hunt for the perfect photographer

I LOVE LOVE LOVE wedding photography (well really most any photography) and secretly wish sometimes I had the talent and skill do be a photographer myself, but alas.  This decision ranked right up there with church and reception site.  Even before we were engaged I would spend my free time perusing photographers blogs and websites just looking at the beauty they capture with a camera, so I had a pretty good idea of what I wanted.  I had a few very specific requirements that were must haves but other than that I was just hoping I would know the perfect photographer when we saw them.  Requirement number one was that a DVD of images with copyright privileges must be included in the package.  We were going to be spending a lot of money and they are pictures of us after all so why shouldn't I have rights to them?  The other requirements were 2 photographers, unlimited time limits, and locations.  Nick and I really want pictures that tell the story of our day and to make that happen we felt it was important to have more than one person who could shoot the entire day from different vantage points and we didn't want to be stuck in a position of missing something important because we only have the photographer for 6 hours.

Too much to ask?  I didn't think so.  Well it turns out that it was a little harder than I had anticipated.  Not that we couldn't find a lot of photographers who were willing to give us those things it was just that most of them were going to cost more than the ENTIRE reception and that just wasn't going to fly.  Then one lovely Sunday afternoon we went to a wedding show with our friends Justin and Diana who are getting married in May.  This was a crazy insane afternoon and as overwhelming as all the blogs and my friends had warned me.  We talked to lots of photographers and looked a even more wedding albums.  We came home with a giant stack of brochures from at least 30 photographers and this was on top of all the websites I had bookmarked.  It was a little to overwhelming to take on at first so we put it off for a few weeks.  We finally managed to narrow down the list to about 3 that were reasonably priced and offered what we were interested in and scheduled meetings with those 3.  Through the whole process there was one couple that just stood out.  We chatted with them a bit at the wedding show and then again when we met with them.  They sat with us for almost an hour showing us as much work as we wanted to see including more than one wedding from start to finish (which I would highly recommend you get from any photographer you look at).  We met with them first and I think if Nick and I weren't such thorough people we probably would have just signed the contract that night but alas we are and it is important for us to explore all our options.  So we met with the other two photographers, one of which could have been a maybe the other was an absolute no but through it all the first meeting just stuck out and to top it off they were the best priced!  So we signed another contract and wrote another check to Lawing Photography.  They don't have a ton of work on their website but there is enough to give you a sense.  They are just the right amount of fun and artsy without being too out there and still giving us the touch of traditional that we were looking for.

So for those of you keeping score that is officially 3 decisions crossed off the list!  (I told you I liked to cross things off lists)