Essence Photo & Video

Ryan Jackson was our photographer and he was the best to work with. He was so professional yet easy-going. He felt like he was part of the wedding party because he took the time to blend in and get to know everyone. He was upbeat, positive and we could all tell he CARES about his craft. He coached us all through our poses and easily blended in to catch great shots! Highly recommend!!!

If you need a good and reliable company, choose Essence! Specifically, we had Peggy & she was phenomenal! She really gets to know you and your personality as a whole and works really well with what your vision is! She got our engagement and wedding pictures back to us SO incredibly fast! If you want the best, request Peggy!

We had our wedding on July 1st 2022. Three months prior to our wedding we were able to find out about Essence Photo & Video and we're extremely grateful we did! We can't imagine having hired anyone else to excel our experience and expectations on first timer bride and groom. We went into this experience with ideas in our heads but working with Chris and Gerry, they gave us their utmost honest professional opinion and guided us toward our dream wedding. Their professionalism and care towards the bride and groom is amazing and they go above and beyond what you would imagine. Our photographer Essi was extremely courteous towards what we wanted and what she knew would become beautiful and natural photos to show our most natural flow of love. We had the full experience with Essence Photo & Video and we're so glad we did. Our day was wholesome and it was an experience we will never forget and with a business, or family, like Essence, everything just fell into place. We thank you to everyone in this business. Mr. and Mrs. Ramirez.

Essence is such a professional and efficient staff who helped my wife and I plan an amazing wedding. Save the dates and formal invitations were amazing quality and a breeze to customize. Tuxedos were super sharp and tailored perfectly. They had a huge role in our amazing day!

Essence did a great job at our wedding. We hired them for photography, DJ (review at Spinnin' Discs page), and added a few up-lights to our contract later on. For Chicago area wedding photography, they're pretty reasonably priced, and you get a discount for hiring them for multiple services. Communicating through their online platform was simple. We chose Tommy as our photographer, and he did a wonderful job putting us at ease in from of the camera. He was with us for a full 8 hours on the wedding day, taking pictures most of the time. We went for the simple album option, and it turned out beautifully. It was easy to communicate with the design team to make a few tweaks to the design. Their photo download system could use some work, though. There were a lot of duplicate photos, so we only wanted to download our favorites to save digital storage space. Well, you can choose your favorites easily, but when you go to download them the only way to get just your favorites is to drag and drop each individual photo from your favorites list. Tedious in the extreme! Other than that, Essence did a great job and were very easy to work with.

Our day-of photographer got sick at the last minute but Peggy stepped in and WAS GREAT! We'd already spoken with her to let her know what type of photos were important to us, important moments we hoped she'd be able to capture, etc. Only recommendation would be to update the planning form on their website to allow more flexibility to communicate what is important to us earlier in the process, but I wrote out what we wanted in an email and they made it happen! Peggy made the day easy, and in the end we had over 900 photos, and so many of them were keepers. One note: As a last minute request we asked Peggy to do a photo of the ENTIRE group, so she spoke to the DJ, jumped up on a chair, & got some SPECTACULAR photos. They were so good we had to print & send them to everyone in the photo after the wedding :-)

I couldn’t be happier with the effort and time put into our special day, October 7th 2023 at Farmington Lake & DiNolfo’s Banquets. We initially met with the manager at the Orland location, Chris. He was pleasant to work with and he was very responsive to our questions/concerns. He worked exclusively with our venues to make the day run smoothly! Thank you so much to our OUTSTANDING photographer Peggy, Videographer Jesse, and DJ James!!! I am in absolute awe of the dedication and attention to detail these three had to make it the best day ever. Everyone worked together so well and it’s very clear to me that this team loves what they do. If you’re on the fence with choosing your vendors- seriously look no further. Everything ran so smoothly with Essence being a one stop shop for the three services (there’s even more offered by the way!!) and I couldn’t have asked for a better team. We all had a blast too! I received multiple compliments from my guests about Peggy, Jesse, and James. If I could rate my review higher than 5 I would. Thank you again for everything. We are absolutely over the moon!!!!!!! We will cherish our day and this special experience for the rest of our lives. Thank you all so much for being apart of it. Love, McKenna and Cody Harrison

My Wedding was September 22, 2023 and Essence Photo and Video did absolutely AMAZING on my wedding day. My Photographer's name was Peggy and my videographer's name was Jesse. They were so patient and kind to everyone in and out of my wedding party. If you are looking for an extremely professional experience, but also very fun and easy-going crew I would say don't hesitate to book with them. They truly helped make my wedding day experience everything I dreamed it would be. I received preview pictures right away from my photographer and they are BEAUTIFUL. I also used their DJ services. His name was Ceasar, and everyone raved of how good of a DJ he was. He had everyone on their feet and having a GREAT time. Essence is HIGHLY recommended in my book. THANK YOU ALL SO MUCH!

We went through Essence for our photographer, DJ, and photobooth. Booking was straightforward and easy, and Ron and Sheila were both very responsive. Our photographer Allison did an amazing job on pre-ceremony shots at the Garden of the Phoenix, and when an emergency came up, her boss Peggy stepped in and took over seamlessly handling both the ceremony and reception. Both Allison and Peggy really captured our best sides, despite neither of us being particularly photogenic. The photos turned out great, and the turn-around time was unbelievably fast!

Extremely happy with every service essence provided. We used 2 photographers, 2 videographers, 2 djs, and the tux services, and all of them exceeded expectations. Mike was able to answer all of our initial questions and made making the choice to go with Essence easy. Peggy was great as she was our main point of contact throughout the planning process and always answered quickly. Gerry is very easy to work with and works around your schedule to get everyone looking amazing. My husband has had some horror stories of prior weddings with his pants ripping and being very uncomfortable. This was one concern Gerry said “you will have to try and rip my material”. He did not disappoint! Everyone was very comfortable throughout the entire wedding with no rips. Amazing quality! I would highly recommend anyone to use their services. Rob and his team were our photographers and they provided beautiful pictures. Rob made taking photos easy, fun, and efficient which was key with a July wedding. We just received our video as well and love it! We would highly recommend Essence and their variety of services!

We could not be happier with the services we received from Essence! We did a package that included: photography, videography, photo booth and DJ and we are beyond thrilled with our choice. It helped so much knowing that everyone had already worked together and it truly helped our day flow smoothly! From our first meeting with Mike to our engagement session with Peggy we knew we had found the right fit. Not only were our photos for our engagement session and our wedding AMAZING but we also got them back so fast! Our video and photo booth photos came back to us quickly as well! Everyone on the team was so kind, organized, experienced and efficient and truly helped us to make our day incredibly special and exactly what we were hoping it would be. We highly recommend Essence for your wedding day!

May 2021 bride here. I don't remember how is stumbled upon Essence but I'm sure glad I did. Being a one stop shop for photography, videography, picture booth, and even the men's suits was a blessing. They also offer a dj service but our venue had a dj, otherwise I would've booked that too. I had no idea where to start when it came to wedding planning. This made it insanely easy to book everything and coordinate the day off. My husband raves about the formalwear service. He loved how simple the process was. And for less than what most rentals cost, the groomsmen were able to even keep their suits! Gerry, who handles the formalwear, went above and beyond. Our wedding was still in the mix of covid related back orders and shipping delays. Our suits were delayed in transit days before our wedding. Gerry tracked down the packages and drove to intercept them at a warehouse. Amazing customer service. Our pictures are something I will cherish forever. They were better than i imaged. Essi Ala-Kokko was a photographer and he was so easy to work with. He knew how to position us for the formal pictures and was able to get communicate effectively. Lastly, I had concerns with our wedding video. After discussing these concerns with Chris, general manager of Orland location, Chris did everything in his power to make me happy. We decided on a song change and a re-edit because the song I chose just made the video boring. Peggy, wedding director, also went above and beyond. She was he one who approved to re-edit the video and she stayed on top of the editing team. Side note: I didn't reach out about my concerns until well over a year after my wedding and they still did everything they could to help me. I am incredibly please with the final product and am so happy to have been able to work with such an awesome team. They truly care about their clients.