Photo Finish?!

Did we magically land on an awesome photographer who is in our budget, takes amazing pictures, is super nice, and has a young fresh perspective on wedding photography?

Bye-George, we may have!

Saturday we met with Photog #1 - a large studio that has 12 photogs offering a variety of styles and unbeatable prices (seriously, unbeatable. I've never heard of a wedding photog costing under 1K for an all day inclusive package). So we met, listened, talked, and then got the bad news... 7 of the 12 photogs were already committed for our day. (Piff... don't these people realize its MY wedding day... who else is having their wedding pictures taken on MY wedding day?!?!) But, keeping an optimistic attitude, we went back to my lappy after our meeting and checked out the remaining photographers galleries. SNORE... we were just not feeling any of the available photogs. Although they had all the pictures your bride and groom would ask for, they looked like they cost their low price tag, and that would not cut it.

So... off we went Sunday to meet with Photog #2 - a young, recently married, individual photog who had gotten nothing but exceptional reviews on wedding wire, the knot, and yelp. We met at Starbuck in Oak Park, ok thats 2 small points that may have been working in his favor right off the bat, and just had a real quick conversation about what we were looking for and what his skill set provided. The pictures kind of spoke for themselves, they were really emotional and vibrant in color. They just said "happiest day of my life". It was a good meeting.

However, we walked away from the consultation with the biggest hurdle still ahead of us. Photog #2 would be e-mailing a proposal and price quote later in the afternoon. And of course, our Internet was down the remainder of Sunday... enter KJ's iPhone that can pretty much solve at least 1/3 of life's problems...

Of course, being the good sales person a photog should be, Photog #2 included 3 options for us in the proposal: the basic, the acceptable, and the everything package. The acceptable package is just a tiny bit over our budget, and includes almost everything we wanted, with a very fair price tag. My concern about the package is that its for 8 hours of wedding photography. I have no idea what our timeline is going to be like and if 8 hours would be enough?

So KJ and I are taking 3 days, I said till Wednesday, to mull it over and make a decision to sign or to keep shopping.

It's kind of crazy to think 2 photographers in we may have found the one that will help us preserve the memories from our wedding we will share for the rest of our life. Although I wouldn't say Photog #2 and I will become best friends (the meeting wasn't thaaat good), I was ok and it was very easy to interact with Photog #2, which is important for someone like me who becomes an awkward turtle when put in front of a camera. Photog #2 seriously has exceptional reviews online (every time there was a rating system between 1 and 5 stars, photog #2 got 5 stars in everything...Photog #1 got varied reviews between 1 and 5 stars...consistency is a big thing for me) but I'm scared to commit. I think the only thing holding me back right now is just that feeling of "what if" and those scary second thoughts.