About this vendor
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Details
Business Attributes
- Woman-owned Business
Photo Shoot Types
- Bridal Portraits
- Engagement
Photo & Video
- Online Proofing
- Photo
- Second Shooter Available
- Wedding Albums
Photo & Video Styles
- Artistic
- Classic
- Lifestyle
Wedding Activities
- Getting Engaged
- Rehearsals & Parties
- Wedding
Awards and Affiliations
2023 'Best of Weddings'
Best of Weddings
The Knot independently assesses vendors for this award—it’s never self-reported. We base it on firsthand experiences from real couples and guests, and they must have a 4.5-star average across 7+ reviews in the qualifying year.
Reviews
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5
out of 5.023 reviews
Review photos
Showing slide number 1 out of 9
Melanie Zacek is an absolute dream to work with! She has an incredible eye for detail and composition — our photos are light, airy, modern, and sophisticated, yet also feel editori...
al with the way she uses backgrounds. She photographed both our engagement session and our wedding day, and every single image exceeded our expectations.
I’m not naturally comfortable in front of the camera, but Melanie guided me with exactly how to pose, and the results look natural and beautiful. She has a rare gift of commanding attention while being kind, patient, and easy to work with.
On top of everything, we received our sneak peek photos within a week of the wedding, which was such a wonderful treat. We cannot recommend Melanie enough — she made the experience fun, stress-free, and left us with stunning memories we will treasure forever.
Melanie is incredibly talented! She photographed my sister’s wedding, so choosing her for our spring wedding this April was an easy decision. Her style is natural, light, and elega...
nt, and we’re obsessed with how our photos turned out! She was so sweet and professional on the big day, making sure we got every shot we wanted. We are so grateful for the beautiful memories she captured. Highly recommend!
I would absolutely recommend Melanie Zacek Photography to anyone! My husband and I contacted Melanie about being our wedding photographer because she was recommended by our venue. ...
We loved the style of her photography, which is natural, elegant, and light and matched the vision we had for our wedding. Melanie quickly responded and scheduled an introductory call, during which we found her to be extremely helpful, professional, honest, and friendly. We booked her for our wedding and a few months later, we had a belated (but complimentary) engagement shoot to practice being photographed prior to the wedding, which I highly recommend doing if (like us) you are not used to being photographed professionally. My husband and I were a bit nervous at first, but Melanie made us feel so comfortable and gave great direction throughout. We had so much fun during our engagement shoot and the photos turned out better than we could have hoped for.
Fast forward to the wedding day. Melanie and her #2, Kim, arrived early to the venue and needed no direction, as they knew exactly what to do to photograph details and the venue prior to our timeline of photographing me, my husband, and our wedding parties. Everything went extremely smoothly as Melanie skillfully wrangled everyone to get plenty of photos prior to the ceremony within the allocated time we had discussed a couple of weeks before the wedding. We heard from so many of our guests during the wedding and after how wonderful, warm, and professional Melanie and Kim were to everyone they interacted with. Not even a week after the wedding, we received an unexpected surprise when Melanie sent us about 30 sneak peek photos from the wedding, which meant so much to us to see while on our honeymoon. The photos are gorgeous and we have no doubt that the full album we will receive in a few weeks will be filled with beautifully captured memories that we will cherish forever. Excellent wedding photography is truly so important because the day flies by so quickly and the photos are what will help us remember all of the special moments now that the wedding is over. We are extremely glad that we chose Melanie for this role at our wedding!!
We absolutely loved working with Melanie and our photos are GORGEOUS. She had a way of making us feel very comfortable (we are not regulars in front of the camera!) and it shows in...
the photos. We are so pleased we chose to work with Melanie!
I cannot speak more highly of Melanie! I got married at Quonquont Farm in Whatley, MA and she is from the area. This was such a huge advantage as she already had worked with some o...
f our other vendors and knew the farm well. I really loved working with her for our engagement shoot too! I loved the light, crisp/airy look to her photos. It made everything look so beautiful! If you have not checked out her website yet please, do so! Her work is absolutely beautiful and loved working with her!
I have known Melanie for years and the moment my husband and I got engaged I knew that I wanted Melanie to photograph our wedding. Melanie has an eye and style to her work that mak...
es for clean, elegant and timeless images. She is a true pleasure to work with and made the process as easy and comfortable as possible. Our friends and family have loved looking through our pictures and Melanie really captured every detail! Her work speaks for itself! Thanks Melanie!
Melanie photographed both our engagement and wedding day and we are blown away at the quality and professionalism from day 1! Working with her was very easy. She made us feel comfo...
rtable right from the start of the engagement photos, where she knew which shots to focus on and nothing felt forced. We were amazed at both the quality and quantity of the photos on our wedding day. There were several candids and little details that we did not expect that really put a great touch on the entire day. We went with the option of a second photographer as well and we highly recommend it; it allowed for much more flexibility throughout the day. Cannot thank Melanie enough for such amazing results!
I don't even know where to start with explaining how absolutely amazing Melanie is. First off - she may genuinely be the sweetest, calmest, kindest person I have ever met. From the...
moment we first met her at our engagement photos, she was just so sweet and makes you feel like you've known each other for years. My husband tends to get very uncomfortable in front of the camera, which often comes across on his face but it was clear in the pictures and from him talking about the day, how comfortable Mel made him feel and how enjoyable of an experience she made a chilly, snowy, December day. Speaking of cold... a little less than a year later, we got married in the Berkshires in mid-November and HOLY. COLD. I had a sleeveless dress and it was probably less than 15F outside with wind chill. We did a first look and planned on taking wedding party photos outside cause our indoor space was limited-and it is an understatement to say that Melanie was an absolute CHAMP throughout it all. I got painfully cold and extremely cranky/difficult in probably less than 5 minutes. Melanie was literally flawless at being assertive enough to make sure I bared through it to get all of the pictures she knew I would want and need while also being so sweet and empathetic enough to understand the misery and get everything done as quickly and seamlessly as possible and offer inside breaks whenever possible for us to warm up. With that said, she managed to deliver almost 1,600 BEAUTIFUL photos. Even in pictures where you can tell by our faces that we're freezing to death, its still just a beautiful picture!! Her style and editing is so flattering and light and romantic and just BEAUTIFUL! I am over the moon with all of my photos and so happy to have such amazing documentation of the happiest day of my life. Even fighting through the pain and cold are funny, happy memories for me now because Melanie handled everything so flawlessly and I just can't picture that being the case if I had anyone else there for us on our wedding day. Please, if you have the opportunity, book Mel for your wedding day and you will NOT be disappointed!!
Melanie is absolutely incredible! The photos she took of our wedding were perfect, beyond what I could have ever imagined. They were gorgeously edited, and she captured every singl...
e attendee at the wedding so beautifully. Her personality and energy are also amazing, and my family and all of our guests are still raving about how sweet and fun she was. Truly, I couldn’t have asked for a better wedding photographer, and I am so, SO thrilled with the 1,400+ (!!!) beautiful photos that she delivered to us. She’s simply the best!
No words or positive review could ever fully describe our gratitude for Melanie, her talent, and her professionalism! Of course, the photos Melanie captures are stunning--bright, r...
omantic, ethereal-in-nature; but, that's just the tip of the iceberg. Melanie exudes relaxed, patient confidence...nothing ruffled her feathers once throughout 2+ years of working with her. Numerous questions about details and logistics, family members arriving late for day-of photos, and first look spaces being passed through by random strangers...Melanie never once blinked an eye. She was very easy to communicate with over email and text, always getting back to us in a timely manner, and Melanie was organized in sharing information, timelines, etc. on a single streamlined platform (Honeybook). Something that we really appreciated was Melanie's willingness to direct us; neither of us are very comfortable in front of the camera, but Melanie always put us at ease due to her warm nature and concrete, yet kind, direction. Lastly, something we so greatly appreciated about Melanie day-of was her willingness to be "in the thick of things," capturing every single moment. Without drawing attention to herself, Melanie was front and center on the dance floor, first row for dinner toasts, etc. getting every little shot. Although we barely noticed her, I'm confident that Melanie captured every detail we could have hoped for and then more! We would hire Melanie again a million times over and would recommend her enthusiastically to any friend or family member looking for amazing photos! You can't go wrong when working with her.
Melanie was the photographer for our wedding at Valley View Farm as well as our engagement photos. Not only are our photos absolutely incredible, we had a blast spending time with ...
Melanie. Melanie made us feel so comfortable that we were able to enjoy the entire experience. She captured love and joy in each photo, these photos could not be better. Melanie is organized and clear as well as super approachable. Our photos have already come back from our August wedding, we can't wait to get our album that she puts together as well. I HIGHLY recommend Melanie for a couple that is looking for airy, joyful, bright photos in color and black and white!
We are so grateful to have had Melanie photograph our wedding (and engagement shoot), she's supremely talented and a pleasure to work with! We had to change our wedding date/season...
/timeline after we hired her and she was completely flexible and understanding. She also has a really calming presence in person, which is so helpful on a hectic wedding day. She was even great with our dog, who wasn't feeling very cooperative that day.
The pictures speak for themselves, but we just got back them back and were speechless. Melanie truly listened to what we wanted and we were so impressed by her (and her second shooter's) ability to capture us. There were so many great shots of moments/group combinations/etc that we wouldn't have thought to ask for that she intuitively captured. We had a smaller wedding and I swear she got amazing pictures of every single person there.
I have no idea how we're ever going to narrow them down (we received over 1100 photos from an 8 hour package), but that's a "problem" we're more than happy to have. We really couldn't have asked for more. Thank you so much, Melanie!
Hiring Melanie to capture our big day was the best choice my husband and I made for our wedding. She initially took our engagement photos and were absolutely thrilled with not onl...
y the photos themselves, but the experience of working with her. Photographers are a huge part of your day and Melanie was a pleasure to have there, capturing every moment. The photos we were sent of the wedding day are absolutely AMAZING. There are photos of every guest and every detail. I love that we can look through our album and relive the entire day. And her portraits are incredible. We could not be happier with the experience and could not recommend Melanie more.
We absolutely loved working with Melanie and would HIGHLY recommend her! Melanie did our engagement shoot and our wedding and was so easy to work with. She brings such expertise ...
and guided us in a very gentle and encouraging way during both events to ensure we got all the shots we wanted. Both sets of photos turned out amazing! Our wedding was originally planned for June 2020 but we had to postpone it until June 2021 and throughout the whole ordeal Melanie was so helpful, patient and supportive. We are so lucky that we were able to work with her (and with her second shooter, Kelsey!). We highly recommend Melanie and would love the opportunity to work with her again!
Melanie did such an amazing job with our wedding photos! She truly captured every moment and detail of our wedding day. I love every single photo so much! I highly recommend!
Not only is Melanie incredibly talented, she is a delight to work with! Melanie's photos are absolutely stunning. She is professional, engaging and fun to work with. COVID-19 thre...
w a whole different type of stress into wedding planning but working with Melanie was totally stress free. We asked her to photograph our mini-wedding on our original wedding date and we are lucky enough to be working with her in 2021 for our larger wedding!
Melanie is extremely talented and an absolute pleasure to work with! She made my husband and I both extremely comfortable for our engagement photos, which made our wedding photos a...
breeze. Poses feel natural and authentic instead of forced and awkward. She made us look and feel like models! We are in love with every photo that she took.
Her communication is phenomenal as well. We had to postpone our wedding due to COVID, but Melanie made the shift seamless and also came and shot our elopement! Her photos are of such high quality... I honestly can't believe they're of us. We get non-stop compliments. Melanie is a true professional with a crazy talent but also very kind. Can't say enough good things about her and her work!
Melanie's photographs were spectacular, and the experience of the shoot was really special. It meant a lot to us to have so much care and attention for these photos at this time in...
our lives that we'll be remembering for a long time.
Melanie: gift.
After months of researching photographers, many who were well-qualified but did not feel quite right, I was feeling a bit discouraged and worried that I'd have to s...
ettle. I'd tell photographers that my dream was to have a romantic, Period-drama feeling photos, but I was shut down every time. Melanie was a completely different story. She fully heard me out and entirely executed what I had been hoping for on the wedding day and the engagement shoot. She truly made a dream come true!
Our photos are a gift we will treasure for a lifetime, as well as our memories of the photo sessions. Melanie has a calming and professional presence, so I would take a sigh of relief when she was around during the wedding day. My husband and I are typically reserved and a bit camera-shy, but Melanie made us feel so comfortable, and our photos tell OUR love story. She had us organize and plan the family photo sessions for the wedding day beforehand, and she guided and made sure everyone was where they were supposed to be the day of. It was a fun and 100% painless experience.
The quality and artistry in the photos are excellent. Melanie is so talented and resourceful, so I felt I could trust her with any vision/idea she had. I'm so glad I did. Everyone in our photos looks their absolute best and she caught us at our happiest. We often comment that she made the scenery look better than it actually was! :)
From our first phone conversation to when we said goodbye to each other on the wedding day, I felt such peace and gratitude having her as our photographer. I was a little emotional in saying goodbye and hope to work with her again soon. I cannot recommend her enough!
Melanie has now photographed both of my daughter's weddings! She is outstandingly creative, conscientious, kind, and most importantly fun. She has the ability to tell a wedding lo...
ve story with her photos. She captured the essence of my girls, which is priceless to me. I was hoping for classic, creative, and stunning photos and that is what I got! Thank you Melanie. These photo's will be treasured for a life time.
Melanie is a top-notch photographer; my husband and I are so pleased with both our engagement and our wedding photos. She is thoroughly professional, very friendly and puts us at e...
ase when taking photos. Most importantly, her work is gorgeous, natural and airy, as is evident from her portfolio. We also got our photos back sooner than expected. There are other photographers out there with perhaps a stronger online presence / more numerous reviews, but rest assured Melanie is among the best.
So fun & professional - Melanie made wedding photos fun and easy. She knew all the other vendors and it genuinely seemed like they really loves all working together!
She has a g...
reat eye and vision for photography - we are very happy to have been able to work with her.
Big benefit is the thumb drive in our photography package. It is great to know what we will have every photo to melt over in our pocket!
Melanie and her second photographer were absolutely wonderful throughout our entire wedding day! They were punctual and timely, very professional, very patient with our crazy famil...
ies, and very clear in their direction. They prepped ahead of time with a very useful and thorough questionnaire, and were accommodating when we asked for a couple of portraits that we originally didn't have on on the completed questionnaire. Her work is very beautiful and unique, and captures the people and the setting as they are, not how they "should be". Price was fair and Melanie was very easy to work with. Highly recommended!
Contact
Amherst, MA
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