Photographers

Wedding photographers
When it comes to photographers you have to get it right, right? There's no second chances, right? You only have one day to capture the atmosphere, love, fun, excitement, romance, joy...(yeah, you know what I'm talking about).

Here is a list of things you may want to consider when choosing your photographer.
When will you be able to see the final photos? As a guideline, we had to wait 2 weeks following the wedding to view them on the photographers website which we were given a password for.
Will you have copyright of the photographs?
When will you meet your photographer? Do you get on with him/her? Does he/she make you feel at ease? Does he/she make you feel creepy? LOL! believe me some do! Listen to your first impression.
How many photographers will there be?
How long will he/she/they stay for?
Will they expect food? It is common courtesy to provide soft drinks and depending on the length of time they are providing a service, possibly sandwiches as well.
Is an album included in the price?
We had the option to order an album if/when we wanted to but it was not included in the price. Initially, we had made the decision to make our own album because I wanted to incorporate personal touches as well as photos to make the memory 'come to life'.
Then I found Photobox! An online photo shop where I created my own album. I wanted to test the quality so I ordered an inexpensive (£30, but I had a special offer to receive £10 off my first order so it only cost me £20) photobook. When it arrived I was astounded by the quality and I am now wanting to order more- a bigger and better wedding album, for us, a smaller one for family, a honeymoon album. I must confess, I am hooked. What I like most was that I could upload the 'promises' we had made to each other, the prayer that our guests said for us during our ceremony, the bible verses our family had read during the service and even our vows so that all these memories sat aside our photos. 
The Photobook I ordered is similar to a hardback, high quality catalogue. It is A4 in size and has 26 pages with the options to add more if you prefer. For each page you choose how many photos you have, the layout, whether to include text or not, what photos to place where, it is a creative persons dream. I spent hours, in fact days(!) designing this absolutely gorgeous "coffee table" book. I don't regret one minute of the time I spent on it but then again, I am a bit of a perfectionist at times and I'm sure there are many of you who could get an album you are happy with, finished in 30 minutes. It's just a case of uploading the photos right???
How much is it for you to order photos?
Think about the cost it will be for every one of your guests to have the photos they want printed through the photographer. Usually they can be quite expensive. This appears to be a trick that photographers do to attempt to produce some extra revenue through your guests paying over the odds for photos from the photographers when they could get the same product elsewhere for a fraction of the cost. If you had high resolution copies of the photos, you could send your guests a copy of the photos they want and they could print them out themselves, or get them printed professionally.
Can you view previous work they have done?
We only wanted 4 hours coverage so we asked to provide a couple of examples of the work covered within this time period. Now I wish we could have had the photographer for longer. He was able to capture moments that we had forgotten about on the day and I'm sure there were lots of other moments he would have captured if he was there for the evening too. Learn from our mistake and try to have as much time as you can with the photographer, according to your budget.
We chose a photographer (Ian White) who gave us high resolution images on a disc (some of which are posted on the site). At the time we did not realise we would get 900 or so photos and they did take a couple of hours to look through when we first got them.
However, we received the disc on return from our honeymoon so it was the perfect end to our wedding bliss to look through the photos we had taken on honeymoon, followed by our professional wedding photos with a glass of champagne, in front of an open fire (well, it was one week before Christmas).