Valentino Photography

, Covid happened and we post pond the wedding. They seemed accommodating and had our new date available. We meet with them for our engagement pictures and it went downhill from that point. Our pictures were horrible; they were unorganized and arguing with each other making it very uncomfortable. We decided it was too close to the wedding and to keep them as we had already paid them the full amount and we would lose our money. I meet with Bev to discuss my plans for the wedding. She argued and disagreed with every idea I had. I did not want a first look with my husband even though it is a “time saver” I wanted that moment down the aisle to be special. She disagreed with me trying to convince me for 15 minutes to change my mind. I politely refused. I then told her it was important I do a first look with my father. She did not like that idea at all. She said it was ridiculous to do a first look with my father and not my soon to be husband. She also did not like the idea I was not doing any wedding traditions like cake cutting flower or garter toss. She said “what are we supposed to take pictures of just dancing for hours” I said yes! I want candid pictures of our guests having fun, talking to each other dancing laughing and having fun. When the wedding day arrived I wanted to be in the moment and enjoy it, Take it all in. Everything was going great until Thom showed up. He came in like a whirlwind so much negative energy! The entire wedding staff (Hairdressers and makeup artists, bridal party immediately tensed up and expressed how uncomfortable they were making them feel). Bev didn’t even show up the day of my wedding. I had hired two photographers. I was told she was “sick”. Later I found out she took another gig (in our initial meeting they said they do not double book). Thom tossed my dress on the makeup artist table. Thank Goodness my bridesmaid and mother saw and rescued my dress immediately and told him to be careful with it. I had to tell Thom to send the other photographer to take pictures of my husband getting ready. They were sitting on the couch talking. We only received a handful of decent pictures! They took horrible side angle pictures. I told them I did not like the side view for pictures and they still took 75% of the pictures that way. I had to keep telling them what to do and who to take pictures of! I was directing family and friends and organizing who was on deck for pictures! They stood around clueless! During our reception I really wanted sunset pictures. They pulled us outside to capture the moment, but Thom had dropped the camera in the parking lot and could not get it to work. While his helper just stood and smoked. After 10 minutes of missing our time to eat I suggested to use the second shooters camera so we could get back inside. We also wanted to take back light pictures with our venue in the background. They set it up so the parking lot was in the background of all our backlight pictures. They then asked if they could leave our reception early as people were only dancing and nothing else was going on. At this point I was aggravated and said fine.