Snapping up a photographer - Part I

One of the (very few! I swear!) things I researched during that weird, post-Talk, pre-engagement period was our photographer.

Two things -- besides actually getting married surrounded by our loved ones and their dates -- are really important to me in this wedding: the venue, and the photographer.

I looked on Theknot.com and checked out some photographers I found on there. I went through my local issue of The Knot magazine, and bookmarked the websites of photographers I liked from Real Weddings (man, are "real weddings" a great resource or what?). I even did a little snooping around on Craig's List, since I know one of my favorite Bees, Miss Joey, has had great luck with The List (as my mom calls it).

Once we decided to start seriously thinking about the photographer this past June, I went back to some of the stuff I had bookmarked. Some of it I no longer liked. One woman's site I remembered I really liked several months ago, but I was having a devil of a time getting her website to load, so her and her Flash fell to the bottom of the list.

At the top of the list was a young woman who graduated from the same college my fiance and I did. Vassar has a kind of intense alumni connection thing going on, which I can't explain to you, it just is. So, by virtue of the fact that I
a) liked her website
b) she went to Vassar
c) she took lovely photographs,

we made an appointment to meet with her at a hotel bar in Manhattan. Swank!
She arrived in a snappy outfit with her portfolio and a giant umbrella in order to super-protect her stuff from the rain. Prepared, I like that!

She was all business. She took copious notes about us and our vision, asked a lot of questions, talked about her style, showed us a ton of work. I liked how things were going.

Then she showed us the price list. And she was expensive. And she was expensive before the albums, which were doubly, mind-blowingly expensive. My heart sank, and I pretty much wanted to be like, "Ok, well, thanks but no thanks, see ya." But I was polite and pretended like there was still a chance we would hire her.

As we left (after awkward whispering between me and my fiance about whether we were supposed to buy her drinks or whether she would buy ours), I was like, "Superbummer!" And G. was like, "Mmmm.... I didn't actually think her photos were all that great. And some of them seemed like they were great by accident."

Once he said it, I realized I wanted to be blown away. We weren't totally blown away. Especially not for the money. I felt relieved, that we could move on without feeling bad or like we missed an opportunity.

Then I remembered that I had bookmarked the site for a guy who had done a wedding at our venue, on the exact same floor. I was like, "Let's call that guy!" so we decided to make an appointment for the following week, and went home to walk the dog.