Do NOT, under any circumstance, hire this man for your wedding. I will explain why I feel this way below.
My wife and I got married in April of 2022, so throughout 2021 we were looking for vendors for our wedding. Steven had a good price point..., and we found his personality likable, so we hired him for the day, specifically his two photographer package. All seemed to go smoothly the day of, and our contract stated that we would receive our photos 3-4 weeks after the wedding.
On the four week date, we reached out asking for an update. He said he would need about one more month to finish, which we understood because he also had a full time job in New York City. A month comes and goes, and we begin to reach out about once a week asking for updates on our photos. We finally received photos more than four months late, but we received, at most, half of what we paid for. Many key times were missing from the photos he took, and we received less than five photos that were taken by his second photographer. He did not respond to many attempts at contact asking where the remainder of our photos were, and he finally resurfaced after legal action was threatened against him. He claimed in a brief email that all usable photos were delivered, and once again disappeared. He didn’t realize that we had already gotten a hold of his second photographer, who informed us that all her photos were given over to him to edit. But with these photos seemingly lost at this point, we will never receive the photos centered around myself (the groom) with my side of the wedding party, and anything else she happened to take.
I don’t know if he had a severe technology issue, or deleted them truly on accident (the fact that we received a handful of photos taken by her makes me believe that he was working on them, deleted them on accident, and then didn’t have the guts to admit it), but we signed a contract, and he didn’t deliver on what we paid for. He ignored the Better Business Bureau contacting him, after we filed a complaint through them. He ignored a lawyer, who sent a letter demanding the remainder of the photos or a refund given. He ignored the Small Claims Court contacting him about a court date. He even ignored “The People’s Court,” who wished to put our case on television (I have the voicemails to back this up). In all, we have at least 35 attempts at making contact with him.
This is sadly a very abbreviated version of the trauma this man has put my wife and I through. We have to accept at this point that we did all we could to seek justice for the wrongs he has committed, but at this point, not much more can be done sadly. But, what we can do is help ensure that nobody else falls prey to this man. If you want to have a photographer who will have a friendly personality at first but has no intention of following through on what you pay him for, by all means hire Steven. If you want someone who will actually do his job, then hire, literally, anybody, else.