How Do You Know if a Wedding Contractor Is Right for You?

Of course, the main char­ac­ters of the wed­ding are you and your fiancé 🙂 But you can’t do with­out a close-knit team of pro­fes­sion­al con­trac­tors! The atmos­phere of the hol­i­day, beau­ti­ful details and your mem­o­ries of this day depend on them. That is why it is so impor­tant to gath­er a dream team of wed­ding spe­cial­ists with good expe­ri­ence and pre­vent “sabo­teurs”. Chan­fash­ion col­lect­ed for you 12 signs that the wed­ding pro is not suit­able for you and you should think about replac­ing it.

Inauthentic portfolio

Most of all, this item con­cerns unscrupu­lous pho­tog­ra­phers, dec­o­ra­tors and mas­ters of acces­sories and print­ing. Agree, the hosts are unlike­ly to pho­to­shop their faces on oth­er peo­ple’s pho­tos 🙂 There are sev­er­al ways to cal­cu­late the fake port­fo­lio of a wed­ding spe­cial­ist:

No pho­to series. Alien sin­gle frames are eas­i­er to assign than full-fledged series. Ask a spe­cial­ist for full pho­to reports from wed­dings where he worked. Refusal of such a request is a clear sign of a “thief”. You can ask the mas­ters of print­ing and acces­sories for source codes and sketch­es of projects.

Invalid loca­tions. The palm trees of Los Ange­les, the deserts of Ari­zona are, of course, very beau­ti­ful, but it arous­es sus­pi­cion if the wed­ding spe­cial­ist works only in Ukraine.

A Google search turns up a scam. If you sus­pect a spe­cial­ist of appro­pri­at­ing oth­er peo­ple’s work, start sim­ple. Copy some pho­tos from his port­fo­lio and upload them to Google image search. If pho­tos are dis­played on sev­er­al resources with a false name, this is a rea­son to think.

Works only from master classes

Let’s go in order: what are works from mas­ter class­es? Some­times wed­ding spe­cial­ists team up to cre­ate a beau­ti­ful wed­ding project togeth­er. This is an oppor­tu­ni­ty to bring unusu­al ideas to life, prac­tice your skills and add new works to your port­fo­lio. Dec­o­ra­tors and florists dec­o­rate the loca­tion, the orga­niz­ers invite mod­els and make­up artists, and sev­er­al pho­tog­ra­phers take pic­tures for them­selves and col­leagues. Some­times an ele­ment of edu­ca­tion is added to this: a more expe­ri­enced pho­tog­ra­ph­er shows inter­est­ing tech­niques, shots, cam­era set­tings, and stu­dents cre­ate works under his super­vi­sion.

In gen­er­al, par­tic­i­pa­tion in mas­ter class­es and work­shops is a sign that a wed­ding pho­tog­ra­ph­er is devel­op­ing, learn­ing new things and not stand­ing still. And it’s great!

What is the dan­ger?

Mas­ter class­es are far from the con­di­tions of a real wed­ding. Pro­fes­sion­al mod­els know their best angles and know how to work with the cam­era, tim­ing is not tight, and any beau­ti­ful moment can be repeat­ed. At a wed­ding, you are lim­it­ed in time and the pho­tog­ra­ph­er must “catch” impor­tant and unique shots, avoid col­li­sion with guests, be able to work with ordi­nary peo­ple, not pro­fes­sion­al pho­to mod­els.

If you notice that a wed­ding spe­cial­ist’s port­fo­lio con­sists only of staged shoots, there is a big risk that your pho­tos will not be so per­fect. Expe­ri­ence at real wed­dings will not replace mas­ter class­es.

No contract

“What are these papers for? What, you don’t trust me?” — such a ques­tion is the first sign that you should not trust 🙂 The con­tract pro­vides secu­ri­ty for both you and the wed­ding spe­cial­ist, so you should not neglect it. If the con­trac­tor stub­born­ly tries to dis­suade you from sign­ing a con­tract, it is bet­ter to turn to some­one else: it is too like­ly that such a dis­like for bureau­cra­cy hides a desire to break agree­ments with impuni­ty. Or sim­ple option­al­i­ty and a friv­o­lous atti­tude to busi­ness — and these are also not the best qual­i­ties for a wed­ding con­trac­tor.

Change of conditions after the contract

Did the wed­ding spe­cial­ist sign the con­tract? The first step is done, it remains to make sure that he will car­ry it out 🙂 If one of the con­trac­tors starts chang­ing con­di­tions on the go, then take a clos­er look at him. Of course, there are dif­fer­ent sit­u­a­tions, but the con­stant change in the con­di­tions of pay­ment and work is a bad “bell”.

The final cost of work after the con­clu­sion of the con­tract can only change if you decide to add new options: for exam­ple, an exten­sion of the shoot­ing, addi­tion­al equip­ment or decor.

No mutual understanding

Some­times it hap­pens that both the pro­fes­sion­al is good and the per­son is won­der­ful, but there is no mag­ic in com­mu­ni­ca­tion. You and the wed­ding team should be on the same wave­length. Still, you will have to eat more than one pood of salt togeth­er dur­ing the prepa­ra­tion peri­od and on the wed­ding day 🙂 Estab­lished com­mu­ni­ca­tion and pleas­ant com­mu­ni­ca­tion will help resolve issues quick­ly and with­out unnec­es­sary stress. And how nice it is when a spe­cial­ist picks up your ideas and offers what you like! In addi­tion, on such a day you should be sur­round­ed only by nice peo­ple 🙂

Criticism of your ideas

It hap­pens that the ideas you pro­pose are sim­ply impos­si­ble to imple­ment due to tech­ni­cal nuances or bud­get con­straints. But even then, a pro­fes­sion­al in his field will tact­ful­ly refuse you and argue why such an idea is unre­al­is­tic. And bet­ter — tell a more prac­ti­cal alter­na­tive 🙂

An unhealthy sit­u­a­tion aris­es if the wed­ding con­trac­tor has already had his own vision of your wed­ding, he “push­es” it and does not want to change it in accor­dance with your desires. Or, more­over, crit­i­cizes your pro­pos­als to the nines with incor­rect state­ments. In this case, it’s bet­ter to say good­bye and find some­one who under­stands that you are the main char­ac­ters of this day, and not extras in his direc­to­r­i­al pro­duc­tion.

Discussion of other couples and specialists

For a long work expe­ri­ence, a lot of fun­ny sto­ries accu­mu­late that can come up in a con­ver­sa­tion with you, and this is even inter­est­ing 🙂 In addi­tion, your team mem­bers can advise oth­er wed­ding spe­cial­ists, because they have already seen their strengths and weak­ness­es in prac­tice.

But it’s a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent mat­ter when the con­ver­sa­tion turns into crit­i­cism, gos­sip and con­dem­na­tion. This is def­i­nite­ly not the best human qual­i­ty, so remem­ber that you can be dis­cussed behind your back in exact­ly the same way.

Payment before the contract

In no case can mon­ey be trans­ferred with­out writ­ten agree­ments.

Before pre­pay­ment, you must clear­ly under­stand all the terms of coop­er­a­tion and agree to them. If you trans­fer the mon­ey before sign­ing the con­tract, the wed­ding spe­cial­ist may change the con­di­tions or add new ones that do not suit you. But it will be dif­fi­cult to return the advance pay­ment.

Hides reviews

Reviews of real new­ly­weds is one of the most impor­tant indi­ca­tors that you can focus on when choos­ing a wed­ding team. The main thing is that they are real 🙂

If there is a lot of neg­a­tiv­i­ty or no reviews at all, then it’s worth con­sid­er­ing: 2–3 bad reviews can real­ly be the intrigues of com­peti­tors or a bad expe­ri­ence, but they should be cov­ered with a lot of words of grat­i­tude. Oth­er­wise, it may be an indi­ca­tor of inex­pe­ri­ence or fraud.

big rush

The selec­tion of a team for orga­niz­ing a wed­ding is asso­ci­at­ed with dif­fi­cult deci­sions. There­fore, you need time to weigh the pros and cons, calm­ly con­sid­er your ver­dict and choose the best wed­ding spe­cial­ists. If the con­trac­tor, with­out objec­tive rea­sons, is active­ly urg­ing you to sign the con­tract and make an advance pay­ment right at the first meet­ing, then do not set­tle for such a rush. Of course, dates in the high sea­son are sold like hot cakes, but you still shouldn’t make hasty and rash deci­sions.

Price dumping

The low cost of ser­vices may be attrac­tive at first, but you should think: why does a spe­cial­ist eval­u­ate his work so cheap­ly? Pro­fes­sion­al equip­ment and train­ing are not cheap, so the work should cost accord­ing­ly. Even if the wed­ding spe­cial­ist does not engage in fraud, the low price may indi­cate his inex­pe­ri­ence. Are you ready to risk qual­i­ty for the sake of sav­ing a cou­ple of thou­sand?

Doesn’t get in touch

Yes, even the most respon­si­ble con­trac­tor may not answer at six in the morn­ing on Sat­ur­day 🙂 Remem­ber that there are also peo­ple on the oth­er side of the mes­sen­ger screen, with their fam­i­lies, plans and prob­lems. There­fore, they can­not always respond prompt­ly (unless we are talk­ing about the wed­ding day, of course). Treat this with under­stand­ing and respect, and then the team will be grate­ful to you!

How­ev­er, if the wed­ding con­trac­tor reg­u­lar­ly for­gets about sched­uled calls, reads the mes­sage and does not respond to them, dis­rupts meet­ings or sim­ply dis­ap­pears for an indef­i­nite peri­od, it is bet­ter to look for a replace­ment. There is no guar­an­tee that the day before the wed­ding, he will not dis­ap­pear again, leav­ing you in a pan­ic.