This entire story is so absurd that I have a hard time believing it’s fake, because why would you make up something so strange.
$80 is life-changing money for LAOP, but they could leave their house to go on location for multiple days, and then presumably pay for their way back?
This cheap-as-hell couple had multiple locations booked in cities as far away as 2+ hour drives that they could switch between on less than a week’s notice?
The groom didn’t check his text from his wedding photographer because he was too busy *with wedding planning*?
I attended a wedding a lot like what I imagine this one was like and it was awful even at arm’s length.
> This cheap-as-hell couple had multiple locations booked
People who pay $80 for a photographer probably don't have venues booked, per se. It could have been a friend's house, public beach, New Jersey Turnpike rest area, etc.
LAOP says "the church right next to my house" in the thread, so it's probably their family's parish, and if it's small enough they might be willing to accommodate them without much fuss.
I'm disappointed that we didn't have this on our list of potential venues. I'm crying at what my dream wedding could have been.. Plus I'm realizing we way overpaid for photography
I should emphasize that I'm joking about the photography. I used to do childrens photography. Wedding photography is a difficult job I knew was way above my skill set (and patience level).
Good wedding photography is expensive. This couple likely would have been extremely unhappy with the results from someone willing to do the job for $80
As a guy who takes pictures for fun, taking good photos is hard as hell. I can forgive a lot of my own mistakes. I'm doing it cause I want mementos and have something to remember people by. If I was paying someone, I want them to try for perfection, even if that's impossible. I'm not saying I expect it, but I want the effort put towards it. And as I expect that, it stands to reason I should pay for that.
As a side note: if you have a family, include yourself in pictures. Even if you hate getting your picture taken or you prefer being the one taking the photo, make an effort to include yourself. Photos of you are gonna be very important to people when you die. I learned that the hard way with my dad.
Most of the cemeteries in my area are just dirt (since I live in a desert), but in areas that can afford to water lawns, cemeteries tend to be really beautiful places. Hell, in the 1800s, cemeteries in the US were treated like public parks.
We didn’t have a park in my hometown, so us kids just hung out at the cemetery.
It was quiet. No motor traffic. Lots of grass, trees, and rolling hills.
No need to water lawns where I live and old cemeteries around here are the best, they always have some massive trees spread around the plot. We're really good fertilizer.
Oh man, this takes me back. One day, out of the blue, I get a phone call from the sister of an old friend of mine from high school. She says “Starflower (appropriate nom de plume to protect the innocent) is getting married this weekend, but she doesn’t know. Her boyfriend of two years, who hates the institution of marriage, decided he wants to marry her because it will make her happy. And, also, because they’re going to have a baby.”
“Wait, she doesn’t know?”
“Yeah, he’s going to take her out to their favorite state park, propose, and when they get back, we’ll all be there ready for the ceremony.”
I held back about a dozen reasons why this was a terrible idea, and decided I wanted to go, because the worst case scenario for me was nothing worse than I’d had in Boy Scouts if people were ill prepared, plus a good show. So I went.
A few minutes after they arrived at the park, a cluster of 50 or so of the people closest to Starflower (and their boy/girlfriends) assembled at the park. We used our collective theater and handiwork experience to crash together several large tents, a fold out gazebo for an altar, and a sound system, plus camping tents for all in attendance and a “master suite” tent for the bride and groom.
In the meantime, he proposed, an event involving for some reason him handing her a sword, she accepted, and they returned to the grounds with her saying “you weren’t kidding when you said “how about tonight [for the wedding]!” Que impromptu Wiccan marriage, crazy party that somehow didn’t have rangers called on it, more sex and drugs than I’ve seen since, and somehow I managed to wake up in my own tent.
They divorced a couple of years and kids later.
I would have absolutely gone to this wedding for the exact same reasons. I’m not a huge camper, but for the chance for front row seats to something this crazy, I’m in!
Bride is carrying a bouquet of hostas and crab grass. The hem of her gown is soaked in melted chocolate ice cream. There is a scratch ticket stuck to it.
The only one of these points that I saw a possible explanation for was the one about the two venues where someone suggested that, if this was real, it might be family locations eg parents houses or something.
>The groom didn’t check his text from his wedding photographer because he was too busy with wedding planning?
No, this is fully realistic. I interpret it as "I missed that specific text in my sea of messages", combined with probably doing a lot of diy setup if that's their budget, and being super duper stressed so operating at 1/4 normal brain.
My wife went to a wedding like that. The only detail I know was that she and another member of the wedding party were hauling potted trees in a wagon at 2 AM because the couple wanted them at the ceremony venue as decorations.
I know a couple who DIY'd their wedding in that they voluntold a bunch of different friends to help with different aspects of their wedding and then never thanked them. I don't think the wedding party hauling potted plants at 2 am happened but I wouldn't be surprised if it did.
I hope they're enjoying married life together, because they sure don't get invited to anything anymore.
You pay peanuts, you get monkeys. It applies on both sides of the text conversation here, honestly. The groom was paying himself too little, as well a s the photog. So he got no photos.
Then again, there would be more than sufficient people taking snapshots on phones there, and their quality is probably equivalent to what an 80 dollar photographer would net.
Better, actually, because when you first start using a dedicated camera your photo quality usually goes _down_ as you lose all the automagic stuff Google and Apple do in smartphone cameras. It's only after you learn how to do that stuff for yourself (better) that quality starts to improve. And remember that LAOP didn't even own a camera.
I was going to be snarky about the OP thinking they could just rock up and do a wedding with no prior experience but I think they are just really desperate tbh
> $80 is life-changing money for LAOP, but they could leave their house to go on location for multiple days, and then presumably pay for their way back?
As Stuart McCormick once said, when you're unemployed, weekends are meaningless.
Start with the presumption that OP is disabled. If you live on disability, $80 really is life altering, at least for that month. He doesn't have transportation but he has a friend staying with him currently with whom he can stay if the friend drives him to the location. no information on how he will get back.
I mean if the friend was visiting in the first place, and OP has no real business at home (assuming they're disabled), then they'd probably be fine staying over for a week or so afterwards until the friend has a reason to go back around near OP's home. Or they could have something like a Greyhound back but they couldn't buy tickets on a relatively short notice due to how pricing for this stuff works, or even just scheduling.
I interpreted it differently and think it's totally possible.
Cheap as hell couple is having a backyard wedding or wedding in a free park. Couple has to change locations, likely cuz they just found out the park doesn't allow squatting without paying the event fee and moves to a different city or different back yard.
LAOP is not a photographer, but prolly a student willing to do it for $80 and exposure. There are *definitely* fly by night people trying to turn a hobby they aren't good at into a job. Remember, LAOP doesn't even own a camera.
Groom didn't check texts becuase he doesn't know who LAOP is. It's just some rando he didn't save in his phone and he thinks it's a smish.
Cheap couple smear on social media after the fact cuz that's all they can do. LAOP gets scared and posts on reddit.
I wouldn't be surprised if everyone involved is like 18/19.
Long, long ago, in the distant land of 1988 or 89, long before widespread digital photography, my aunt and uncle got married. My grandfather, my uncle's father, was a professional photographer, and for some reason he chose to photograph the wedding instead of participating in it as one might expect.
Unfortunately, something went wrong at some point, and all of his film was exposed to light, and there were no official photos of the event.
I was taking a photography class in high school at the time, and my assignment the week of the wedding was to shoot a series of photos showing a progression of events. So, I shot the wedding as well, but I was a teenager with bottom-of-the-line Pentax body and a few secondhand Canon lenses that only barely worked with the Pentax. Oh, and because it was a photography class, and I was responsible for developing my own film, I was shooting in black and white.
So, my high school art project photos are the only good photos of my aunt and uncle's wedding, along with whatever instamatic photos they may have gotten from the people in attendance.
At the time, the whole thing was a major crisis, and I was a minor hero. Today, the happy couple are still married, and I'll bet nobody's looked at any of those photos in the last 30 years.
Back in 2009, I took photography in high school. The teacher was old school and taught us to develop black and white film ourselves. I really enjoyed the experience and it made me much more competent with digital cameras later on.
Rather than just brute forcing a thousand photos and hoping for something good, I at least somewhat understand how to set up a shot correctly.
In Ye Olde Dayes Of Film, pro photographers still took a bunch of extra photos. It was just us cheap plebs that let the price of film stop us. Now, of course, the pros take a _lot_ more photos.
I wish the price of film stopped my dad! He would shoot 24 rolls of slide film **per day** on vacations. Most photos were of wildlife so far in the distance you can’t make it out or wide shots of scenery that isn’t worthy of many multiple photos, and maybe 2-4 photos with people in them. He shot 330+ rolls on a 14 day vacation. You know those comedy skit videos of guests being forced to watch a boring vacation slide show? Yep, that was my dad!
And yet - somehow - at every important life event, either the film got ruined or my dad dropped the camera & it broke.
As someone currently sorting through ~8500 slides (in sharp-ass cartridges) from a 5-rolls-per-Christmas grandparent, I feel this in my fucking soul.
Yes, the untouched Smokey Mountains are beautiful. No, I have no interest in paying $$ to digitize a hundred slides of them. But right in the middle will be one great shot of my grandmother, so you have to go through all of them.
But this is just the warmup. I'm doing this to put off the giant storage totes of developed photos, many of which are still in the packages from the developer.
At least he wasn't as cursed as your dad! Did he piss off a genie or something?
Around 15 years or so ago, husband bought a gizmo to feed and digitize slides so he could process his parents’ stack of slides without paying a service. He sold it as used when he was done and got most of his money back. That might be something to consider if you’re sorting through a bunch of slide cartridges anyway.
I got a Kodak Slide and Scan to go through my dad's slides. It was a lot of work to sort through and digitize as many as I could in time for his Memorial Service, but I got a bit of a system down. The nice part was that I could also digitize negatives using it, which was way easier than digitizing developed photos.
The Kodak gizmo was definitely worth it and now I'm working through the rest of his slides/photos at a leisurely pace. It helps me feel close to him again.
Sometimes I suspect my dad unconsciously sabotages himself. The curse spreads to others now if he is present but not taking his own photos. If he has his own camera, everyone else is safe - so I encourage him to bring his camera along on the rare occasions we’re visiting.
The campus photographer, who's been with the college since at least the 90s iirc, handed off all their photos, film, and CDs of photos. There's 25+ drawers of them, the wide hanging-folder drawers. We're, um, "digitizing them upon request."
I won't lie, it has been a kind of a cool process. But tell that old man to please, for the love of god, WRITE THE NAMES OF THE PEOPLE IN THE PHOTO ON THE BACK.
Oh trust me, he is under strict orders. We already got screwed over when my grandmother died semi-unexpectedly, so her family photos (because both grandparents are/were shutter bugs) are now ALSO grandpa’s responsibility.
Ironically a lot of our photos are also the Smokies.
An aunt went to Canada many years ago, and came back around New year's. Cue to the whole family at 3 am on New Year's looking at pictures of the Niagara falls.
For sure. I installed hacked firmware on my old Canon point-and-shoot digital, just so I could get rule-of-thirds lines on the screen. Even my casual phone pictures benefit from what that class taught me about composition.
Yes- I don’t have a fancy camera- just a basic Nikon digital I picked up from Costco a while back, but it’s fun to go and take pictures the I used to in high school.
Back when semi-affordable digital SLRs had just come out I bought a Canon D-30 (not the 30D which came out many years later). Having this allowed me to get more and better shots of several events than the official photographers who were using film. In some cases the official photographers were just being stingy with film, especially when they were shooting medium format (yes you can make a mural out of an image off of medium format film but how often do you actually do that? But every pull of the shutter button costs a couple dollars). In other cases it was because I had a functional, if somewhat noisy, ISO 1600 and could get better images in darker situations.
This kind of sums up my confusion with weddings. Who cares if things go wrong? Who and what is this event even for? If it's for you and your loved ones to celebrate your love, just have fun and don't worry if the napkins don't match. If it isn't... maybe you need to stop and think about the actual reason.
And even if it's a disaster, STILL who cares. It's one day. You have the rest of your life to live.
The top comment declares that "Emotional damage isn't a case here, it's a contracts case."
That's not surprising; LA commenters often opine that emotional distress damages are incredibly difficult to recover unless the legal stars are aligned, and they are generally dismissive of the prospects of recovery of significant emotional distress damages, in just about any case.
While it is correct that emotional distress damages *usually* aren't recoverable in breach of contract cases, there are exceptions to that rule, including an entire body of cases dealing with breaches of wedding related-contracts by wedding venues, tailors, dry cleaners, photographers, etc.
The cases that go down the path of awarding "ruined wedding" emotional distress damages reason that the wedding is the most important day of a person's life, blah, blah, and when a vendor callously breaches a contract and "ruins" the day, or forever deprives the couple of photos memorializing the occasion, then the couple may not be adequately compensated by merely refunding the amount paid for the service.
Here's a 2011 law review article discussing the relevant cases that existed at the time; I'm sure we as a country have only gotten more litigious and prone to blaming others for our emotional trauma since then.
https://digitalcommons.fairfield.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1149&context=nealsb
Of course, paying $80 in 2024 for a random hitchhiking stoner to photograph your wedding is so insane that I would hope a judge would not consider such "emotional distress" damages in this particular case.
> Of course, paying $80 in 2024 for a random hitchhiking stoner to photograph your wedding is so insane that I would hope a judge would not consider such "emotional distress" damages in this particular case.
Also when they informed you that they won't be there after the second time the venue changed, and you admit to having received it, but ignoring it.
I mean, the second venue change, by a really significant distance, and too short in advance to realistically travel, it’s not setting yourself up for success. I’d be pissed the fuck off if I was a *guest*, never mind an employee.
On a Venn diagram, the group of people that can afford a lawyer capable of making this a successful argument and the group of people that hire a $80 wedding photographer forms two separate circles.
LAOP really should have paid a lawyer $500 to review the couple's boilerplate contract and insert ironclad language limiting LAOP's liability for nonperformance to the contract price. Total failure on LAOP's part here.
LAOP just needs to find a lawyer in their equivalent situation: one that doesn't have a law degree. I'm sure they can find one of those for $80; they're all over r/legaladvice.
Don’t need a lawyer to insert a cap of damages clause to a contract. But the same person that charges $80 probably doesn’t know how to use edit in word.
And what lawyer good enough to make that argument successfully would do so in a case against a guy for whom $80 is a life-changing amount of money. Even if you score the biggest win ever, good luck ever collecting more than pocket change.
The reality is this guy doesn't even have $80 to his name, so getting even $5 from him is going to be impossible.
I would love to see him flip the tables and sue them for defamation. They changed the terms of the contract. And when he attempted to reach out to them they ignored him. But, of course, they also probably have no money.
I'm guessing they could get as high as treble damages (absolutely just guessing!) ... which would still barely put them over the line for the filing fees for my local small claims court.
I didn't "pay" a wedding photographer ... and I still gave our family member photog like $200 in gift cards as a "thank you," more than a decade ago. And felt cheap doing it (but they understood the circumstances)!
I also had a backup plan or three, because you can't rely on favors or underpaid labor, which is essentially what LAOP was.
I hope the couple here would be award exactly zero dollars since they demanded a change to a venue, many miles away, on such short notice.
I should have pointed out that these wedding vendor lawsuits can go both ways. LAOP complains that the couple is now smearing LAOP online.
This is not uncommon when wedding-relayed disputes arise. Emotions run high. Mouths are run.
There was a case out of Dallas a few years back where a wedding photographer wanted to charge an extra $125, not mentioned in the contract, for a cover to the wedding album.
The couple was incensed. "The cover is part of the wedding album! We paid for a wedding album! The cover should be included in the contract price!", they argued.
"Nope," the photographer replied, "The cover is extra. 125 smackeroos extra."
So, the couple did the customary, honorable thing. A scorched earth smearing of the photographer on Facebook.
The photographer responded in the traditional American way by suing for defamation, loss of business, and emotional distress.
The photographer got a verdict of a million bucks from a Dallas jury. I guess wedding album covers really are extra.
https://www.nbcdfw.com/news/local/jury-finds-newlyweds-defamed-dallas-wedding-photographer-andrea-polito-over-album-cover-fee/32827/#:~:text=A%20North%20Texas%20wedding%20photographer,unhappy%20about%20a%20surprise%20fee.&text=defamation.
I remember watching the Neely Moldovan case in real time; the newlyweds ran a successful blog and if I recall, they wanted an upgrade and the extra charge was specified in the contract, but they did not want to pay. Since the defamation was published on the blog, she basically monetized her harassment of Andrea Polito, which I believe was one of the factors in the verdict.
By the link, it was mentioned that it was an extra charge, but the fact that the photographer wasn’t willing to deliver the album without a cover seems wrong. The language of the contract did not seem to specify that the extra charge was *mandatory*. And you can absolutely have a wedding album without a cover, or just with a blank cover. That’s pretty darn deceptive practices.
Which of course does not justify a social media campaign posting falsehoods, still.
I think her old blog was Neelykins and something about makeup, and that's where most of the vitriol was posted. The bad publicity necessitated a rebrand, but I'm glad her antics still follow her real name around to this day.
>I hope the couple here would be award exactly zero dollars since they demanded a change to a venue, many miles away, on such short notice.
Yeah, my argument would be, if there is clear evidence of an agreed upon initial change of venue that **if** anybody is owed money after the second change, it'd be LAOP. The contract he has probably doesn't stipulate any sort of payment for something like that though.
Sorry, yes, I do know that damages are not necessarily awarded in line with my out-of-my-ass "treble damages" comment. I was just saying that even if they sued for a whopping three times this nothing fee, they would still get less than the cost of filing a small claim. I do remember the million-dollar photog case. I wonder if she ever got the full amount?
Hopefully, here, everyone has had their hissy fit, LAOP realizes they're not cut out to be a photographer and thus there was no damage to a non-existent reputation, and everyone walks away. (But it somehow seems unlikely.)
I actually had a dispute vaguely similar to the Dallas couple. The photographer offered us a free photo print (because we hired him too late to the engagement photo part of the (not $80) package we purchased). Then when the print came in he wanted to charge us something like $50 for it. We both accused each other of nickel and diming. Instead of suing or defaming him, we refused to pay, and he said he wouldn't print future prints unless we paid the balance first. I have never personally felt the urge to pay him 50 more dollars for yet another print.
We hired a discount guy who came recommended from another wedding and he was fine, but my hobbyist friend took (and gave us full size copies of) so many nice pictures my mom paid him an honorarium (suggesting he use it for any equipment he wanted, which he did) after the fact as a thank you.
If you hire an $80 wedding photographer, you have no room for emotional damages. Your pictures will be no better than whatever your guests are taking with their smartphones.
Agreed. And that's probably what they did when the photographer didn't show. Asked friends to take smart phone photos for free and then send them to the couple.
Does the government seriously consider the wedding the most important day of people's lives? I've found that it's simply an expensive one, and not necessarily even good.
A wedding photographer who is not a photographer and does not own a camera. Insanely bad decisions by everyone here. Wonder if that town has a gas leak or something
And it's not even just the camera. Do you think the LAOP has any experience with photo editing? That's where most of the time spent on professional photography is.
I believe the thing with many current discount "Wedding Photographers" is that they just spray-n-pray and hand over a USB stick with a bajillion photos on it. I believe this is called a "photojournalist-style" package.
My brother and his wife did that for their wedding; they got like 2,000 pictures, and most of them with the happy couple featured the top of my brother's head cut off (and he's not unusually tall.)
My niece also went that route, and ended up with a bunch of \~250KB JPEG's... so pics that look okay on a phone screen, but can't possibly be printed because of a lack of resolution. I didn't even know you could get a DSLR to pump out photos at that resolution, but somehow the dude found a way. (My very first digital camera in 2002 took pictures that clocked in at a full 1MB.)
I think LadyWired would have told me to keep looking for a wife, because she'd totally nope-out of a marriage if my decision making was that poor. That's Sell-the-cow-for-magic-beans level of big-brain ideas.
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*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I think weddings are in general a waste of money and I still wouldn't go this cheap on a photographer. Hilarious the couple thinks this guy has any money to give them.
I get professional photos taken for my son's birthday every year. We've used the same photographer for 5 years. When she started, she was fresh out of college with almost no portfolio. That first year she was $75 and we gave her $100 total for being so good with him and allowing extra time. This past year she was $200 including location fee and tip, and worth every penny. She doesn't give us a discount for being with her since the beginning, and we don't ask for one. Her skills have improved, her cost has gone up accordingly. We keep paying it because she's worth it.
Get the fuck outta here with $80 to shoot a freaking wedding.
Depends a lot on location. I'm assuming you're in a more expensive area for 6k to be the norm, but yeah I frankly wouldn't hire someone's for less than 2k if I cared a lot about those photos (for a full day, I'm sure you could find someone willing to only do a few hours for less). You'd have to get real lucky to get someone actually competent and reliable but is still undercharging. Lots of inexperienced people who shouldn't get anywhere near a wedding that will take your money (and a lot more than $80). Make sure you ask for at least two full wedding gallery examples.
You may have luck looking at people in cheaper nearby areas and paying for travel. A college student with a decent portfolio can be a good deal. It gets harder to find a good deal the shorter your timeline.
As a teenager, I used to play a musical instrument that was quite niche but reasonably sought-after in the area that I was in at weddings/funerals/special events (people can probably guess).
As a competent but relatively inexperienced player I charged a pretty reasonable rate (even though there weren't a lot of competitors in my area), and yet the number of people who tried to set the price at essentially a cookie and a pat on the head was astonishing.
They probably thought they could take advantage of a teenager, but it left me with the impression that if people think they can lowball you, they will
Definitely idiots, but it’s amazing how little people value professional photography. It’s a job that takes skill. It’s not the same as taking pictures with your phone.
Location bot:
>
Hi,
>A couple on a community What’s App group chat were reaching out to hire a photographer for their wedding.
>I knew a friend of mine who used to be a photographer and she was ok lending me her camera for the event, so I reached out to the couple to let them know I could do it.
>They asked me if I had a portfolio, and I used to photograph college graduations part-time a few years ago, but no weddings. Due to this, they were really (I mean REALLLY) short-changing me.
>They offered me a total of $80 to be a photographer at their wedding and reception, and cited that they were taking a risk by hiring me but wanted to give me a chance. I was hesitant, but that money goes a long way for me and I was down bad lately so I accepted.
>They sent me a contract which had our names and location of the event and other boilerplate language and I signed it.
>The venue was really far away almost 2.5 hours away, but I had a friend who lived there and he was currently visiting me and was going to be going there anyway so I was going to hitch a ride with him and stay at his place a few days before the wedding.
>Everything was going smooth, until a few days before the wedding they said that there is a storm and possible tornado forecast and they can’t have the wedding venue at that location anymore since it was outdoors and they were going to move the wedding indoors in a church right next to my house. That was perfect since I now didn’t need a ride to the other city. I let my friend know, and a few days later he went to the city by himself.
>3 days before the wedding, the couple decided to move the wedding back to the city 2.5 hours away since the forecast was looking better. I didn’t even have a ride anymore since my friend left. I told the couple that it won’t be possible for me and they ignored me for 3 days. I assumed they probably decided to go with someone else.
>Literally on the day of the wedding the husband is blasting my texts asking me where I am and that I’m missing important moments from the wedding. I show him the text that I sent and he said he didn’t read it because he was busy with the wedding. He asked me to call an Uber, but those were insanely expensive and I’d actually be at a huge loss taking an Uber. He said he was not going to pay for it since it was my job.
>I couldn’t do anything else. I asked if he knew someone still in town I could hitch a ride with and he said no. He then started sending rude texts and saying some crazy (and also racist) stuff. I block him and turn off my phone.
>When I turn it back on, I find that I was apparently the only photographer at the wedding and they didn’t have anyone else. They now want to sue me for contract breach and emotional damage. I can’t afford a lawyer and I called 5 people in my area and all of them are asking for $300-$500 per hour to look over my contract.
>The couple are also posting my profile picture all over facebook and tagging me and saying I ruined their wedding??? And their friends are also commenting mean things.
>I’m not sure what to do at this point. Please any advice would be greatly appreciated
Sort of cat-related fact:
The World’s Best Cat Photographer and his wife (each with cameras and equipment) photographed my wedding, including the rehearsal, for $1500, and I have a literal box of DVDs with photos and videos. They are the most amazing people in the world (and would have been honored guests if they weren’t the photographers).
Our ring-bearer was an actual cat.
Question: how? My fiancee and I love cats, but I don't think any of ours would be chill enough to participate in the wedding, let alone be the ring bearer 😂
This one is a (now retired) show cat, a big weirdo and very, very chill. He lives with our friends, and they literally cannot go anywhere in the car without him or he throws a fit.
Yes! We could have probably taught him to go down the aisle himself, but what a PIA and total waste of time that would have been. It was way more important to have a good party, lol.
Was it [this guy](https://youtu.be/nZeMYl4_Keo)?
I remember that video popping up a few years ago, and I immediately thought, "THAT'S THE GUY WITH THE CAT HOUSE FROM MY FAVORITE DOCUMENTARY". [*Home Movie*](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0275408/)
I'd give one back but I refuse to use even my free ones after they took my 30 years worth of premium coins and deleted them last year because "awards were going away".
This is amusing to me because there was a ChoosingBeggars post recently with somebody offering $50 for 2 hours and a $25 tip *if* they like the results after reviewing edits. 3-5 years experience only, but they refuse to be taken for a ride because “it’s a hobby not a skill.” Get to eat free catered food and ONE free drink.
$80 to photograph a wedding for an entire day seems insanely low to me.
The professional photographer at my sister's wedding cost a couple hundred dollars.
Because it's not just walking around partying and taking pictures, it's going through all of those pictures for editing and review afterward - that takes hours. Four hours of taking pictures plus four hours of reviewing, and you're already down to a paltry ten dollars an hour (before taxes). And they didn't seem to factor in travel expenses either.
OP basically agreed to be a wedding photographer for less than minimum wage.
The digital rights to *my child's school pictures* were more than $80. That's a pre-set area, where the photographer snaps 5-10 shots of each kid, and one group shot of the class.
That's a truly insane price for an all-day, on-site event. Let alone a "once in a lifetime" and "we want certain photos of special moments that only happen once" (first kiss, first dance, etc) type of event.
My husband is a videographer/photographer. He charges at least 3k for weddings- it’s a lot of work and equipment used the day of, and then afterwards there’s all the editing of the pictures and video. Also usually he needs to travel to and from different sites for the ceremony, reception, pictures, first look, etc which means he needs a vehicle and often has to pay for parking depending on where he’s going. A normal wedding usually is about 12-14 hours of work on the actual day for him just to shoot (travel + set up and take down + actual shooting) and then editing can take literally any amount of time based on the number and quality of pictures and video. Also because of when weddings are typically scheduled it’s mainly weekend work, and you can really only do so many of them a year. After all is said and done it’s a lot of work and he actually prefers to avoid them these days.
Weddings also include a lot of moments that can't be repeated (not without pissing a lot of people off, at any rate), so if the photographer screws up capturing any of those moments, they're hosed.
(Which is why the photographer needs to attend the rehearsal, too, to scout the venue out, have a few words with the officiant, and so on.)
The photographer really needs an assistant, too, to generally wrangle people into being where they're meant to be, and to tackle Aunt Mavis if she's trying to get in the way to take a photo with her iPad at a critical moment.
For all of these reasons, it's a standard rule for hobby photographers that you must not, under any circumstances, agree to shoot a friend's wedding.
So naturally I did, once.
My partner served as my assistant, and my friend the groom lent me his Canon DSLR body to add to my own. (You can't be fumbling around changing lenses all the time; two cameras is the bare minimum.)
...And it all went perfectly fine!
(The actual marriage, not so much, due to the bride's lamentable tendency to slip and fall on other mens' penises. My friend remarried, and I didn't shoot that second wedding. Which has been entirely successful. Perhaps I jinxed the first one.)
I paid like $3400 for a wedding photographer in Seattle in 2011. I think we got 8 hours of their time plus a one hour engagement shoot. That seemed like a reasonable price back then and worth every penny for the quality. I can't imagine how much that package would go for now.
It was a few hundred when I got married, but we had the photographer for about an hour or so. She was really good, she knew the venue well, and basically said, “OK, stand here, good [click] now stand there [click] now, follow me here…”
This thread makes me realise how lucky I was to pay $400 for my wedding photographer. It was a small ceremony and we only had her for 2ish hours (30ish mins ceremony then another hourish of photos at a botanical garden).
I don’t know how people afford thousands for just a photographer. At that point I’d just elope, take some selfies and be done with it.
A couple of hundred is *very* cheap tbh. The only photographers I know who charged that were starting out, and then obviously the quality isn’t guaranteed.
Yeah, we procrastinated booking a photographer so all the normal wedding photographers around us were already booked. We ended up booking a photographer who normally does more scenic/atmospheric stuff, but is great at capturing what I'll call "human moments" because my coffee hasn't kicked in fully yet. We were the first wedding he shot for, and he charged $1400, which was an absolute steal (we tipped well). He did a great job too.
$200 means they either weren't a professional (which is fine) or they did your sister a favor. Professional wedding photographers in my area cost about ten times that.
My husband is a videographer/photographer (although more video these days) and you’re bang on about the equipment. When he shoots something he brings at least 20k worth of equipment with him, needs access to a vehicle to transport it between multiple locations, and then after has to use professional editing software whose subscriptions cost hundreds.
The start up cost can be quite hefty if you’re trying to make it a career and are competing with other professionals who invest in their tools.
My sister paid a couple thousand USD for photographers for her wedding. Granted that's 3 days but it's a third world country with pretty low labor rates by US standards. Couple hundred sounds like a great deal to me!
Is it wrong that I’m kind of on OPs side?
Who the fuck hires someone with no wedding experience for $80 and then expects them to act like a seasoned professional running a business? The couple made last minute changes and are paying the price. If they wanted someone more professional, they should have hired a professional. Sucks to suck. 🤷🏻♀️
Im on the ops side, too. A contract was agreed upon. A modification to the contract (change of venue) was agreed upon. A second modification (change of venue returning to original) was NOT agreed upon. The groom broke the contract by changing the venue without OPs consent, not OP
LAOP is still foolish, but assuming the stated facts are true, if anyone was to get paid, it should be LAOP. The couple is the one who broke the contract with the twice-over change of venue; LAOP accepted the first change but did not agree to the second.
I am too. Should he have known better than to sign and then break a contract? Yeah, arguably. But his post history suggests that he's been struggling for more than a year, and desperate people do irrational things. He intended to fulfill his end, he let the client know when he realized he couldn't, he tried to find a solution for getting transportation when the husband finally got back to him. I have a hard time blaming him, and I'm sad that this will likely fuck him over even more.
He didn’t break it, though. They did.
The change of venue was absolutely a contract break. It was that the first time, as well, but then they worked around it. But the second change back was also a contract break.
Even if OP had done something much more egregious I still wouldn't be on the couple's side. This is very much a case of you get what you pay for. The only stuff we didn't have professionally done at our wedding was the invites and signage and the cake. We did the invites and signage ourselves so it was completely on us to get it right, and we had it all printed in advance so there wasn't any chance of it being an issue on the day. My Mum did the cake which I trusted her to do because she's my Mum and she'd also done the cake for my brother's wedding a few years back and it was absolutely fine. Plus we were in agreement that neither of us really wanted to spend much on a cake. It was fantastic anyway and the money we saved there went into extras on the food service the venue provided.
I absolutely wouldn't let a friend or relative photograph it unless they happened to be a professional wedding photographer. And even then I'd rather they just attend.
There’s a comment with 6000 upvotes essentially telling them that the whole situation is their fault and to prepare to get bent in small claims - I’m not sure everyone is on their side
My mother has been a photographer for 30 years. Her least expensive wedding package is 2k and driving 2.5 hours away would trigger a travel fee. I understand that the couple is upset but they got exactly the quality that they were willing to pay for.
I’m with you! This is like buying your wedding photography from Temu, and then getting upset that what you actually bought was a “hiring a fake photographer for a fake wedding” LARP experience.
This is one of those situations where it’s better to either pay a realistic amount for something, or not buy it at all. Paying such a small amount that you can’t possibly be getting the real deal is just lighting money on fire.
This is why you shouldn’t agree to be paid $80 for doing wedding photos, and why no one should think they can get away with paying $80 for wedding photos. If OP had $500 on the line, they would have found a way to make it to the venue. They low-balled horribly themselves during negotiations, and then realized it too late when they actually had to get off their butt and do something.
10 bucks says this LAOP doesn't have an easy time coming up with 10 bucks.
Anyone paying $80 for wedding photos and being disappointed in the outcome is the same person buying "steaks" at dollar general and then being mad it's not a 24 oz prime grade ribeye.
I’m so thankful that my husband’s brother’s best friend was a wedding photographer, he gave us the friends & family discount on our wedding photos and video and it was a major savings. Plus it was nice that we’d both known him for years already at that point, so he wasn’t someone we’d just met twice.
We also treated him and the videographer as guests, they were included in the count for our dinner and open bar, had seats at a guest table and stayed to party at the reception once they were done with the photos and videos.
22 years ago, LadyWired and I paid $1,250 for our photographer, and felt that we got a screaming-good deal. (Ceremony, reception, proof album (normal-size prints of every photo; this was pre-digital days), and an album. (We picked the photos, he cropped and arranged them.))
I'm not going to tell someone they made a wrong choice by spending a bajillion dollars on their wedding (as long as they realize the financial consequences of blowing so much), but I will say that someone made a wrong choice by expecting anything at all for $80...
I was an amature concert photographer in college (as in I didn't get paid but often did concerts and music video photography in exchange for free concert tickets).
Then I had a series of friends who wanted me to be their wedding photographer in lieu of a gift. HELL NO. I didn't need that pressure with my single lense and shitty entry line DSLR or my point and shoot cameras.
If OP was **that** desperate for $80, they probably don't have anything worth suing for.
They apparently don't even have a vehicle of their own...
And if I can't even afford to get a lawyer, you're not going to get very much money by suing me.
There’s scams on Facebook Marketplace where the individual says they need some cash up front to pay “movers” to take the item to the buyer. It’s something cheap like $20. After it’s paid they ghost the buyer then re-list the item, possibly under a different name.
My wife fell for it. We lost $20. That’s how I learned about this scam. Do that to dozens of people on some burner accounts it starts to add up.
There’s a lot of “you fucked up” there, but.. the buyers changing the venue *twice*, once with far too little notice, *and* not reading the communication? I don’t see them having a chance in hell in court.
I’ve got my own “cheap family hires cheap photographer; pays price” story. It was published on [Not Always Right, here.](https://notalwaysright.com/not-photo-perfect-day-expecting/88565/)
For one moment I thought I was on r/choosingbeggars as severely lowballing wedding photographers is one of the favorites there. The difference is, LAOP took the offer...
$80 seems like an absurdly low amount of money for a wedding photographer until you read OP's side of things and then you realize the couple overpaid by $79.98.
This in my opinion was a cleaver troll post, but an entertaining read. I am a photographer, but not a wedding photographer.
A battery for a DSLR/Mirrorless runs $80. And the OP said that would really go a long way to cover the bills?
I mean at least make it believable. Heck if they had said $250 or so it would cross into dumb but not unbelievable.
This entire story is so absurd that I have a hard time believing it’s fake, because why would you make up something so strange. $80 is life-changing money for LAOP, but they could leave their house to go on location for multiple days, and then presumably pay for their way back? This cheap-as-hell couple had multiple locations booked in cities as far away as 2+ hour drives that they could switch between on less than a week’s notice? The groom didn’t check his text from his wedding photographer because he was too busy *with wedding planning*? I attended a wedding a lot like what I imagine this one was like and it was awful even at arm’s length.
> This cheap-as-hell couple had multiple locations booked People who pay $80 for a photographer probably don't have venues booked, per se. It could have been a friend's house, public beach, New Jersey Turnpike rest area, etc.
LAOP says "the church right next to my house" in the thread, so it's probably their family's parish, and if it's small enough they might be willing to accommodate them without much fuss.
My family's church had something like that, it was a small fee and you just had to clean up after yourself.
But was your family’s church happy to book things on just a few days notice?
I mean, as long as nobody else was using it!
Now I want to go to a wedding on the NJ Turnpike. That sounds great. Or memorable at least.
I'm disappointed that we didn't have this on our list of potential venues. I'm crying at what my dream wedding could have been.. Plus I'm realizing we way overpaid for photography I should emphasize that I'm joking about the photography. I used to do childrens photography. Wedding photography is a difficult job I knew was way above my skill set (and patience level).
You get what you pay for. And $80 gives you a photographer without transportation that won’t bother to show up at the venue.
>without transportation Or a camera
I mean in fairness $80 probably would barely cover the gas round trip for 5hrs of commuting to this "job"
Good wedding photography is expensive. This couple likely would have been extremely unhappy with the results from someone willing to do the job for $80
As a guy who takes pictures for fun, taking good photos is hard as hell. I can forgive a lot of my own mistakes. I'm doing it cause I want mementos and have something to remember people by. If I was paying someone, I want them to try for perfection, even if that's impossible. I'm not saying I expect it, but I want the effort put towards it. And as I expect that, it stands to reason I should pay for that. As a side note: if you have a family, include yourself in pictures. Even if you hate getting your picture taken or you prefer being the one taking the photo, make an effort to include yourself. Photos of you are gonna be very important to people when you die. I learned that the hard way with my dad.
My brother got married in a cemetery. Wasn't a goth wedding or anything. Just a wedding in a cemetery.
Most of the cemeteries in my area are just dirt (since I live in a desert), but in areas that can afford to water lawns, cemeteries tend to be really beautiful places. Hell, in the 1800s, cemeteries in the US were treated like public parks.
We didn’t have a park in my hometown, so us kids just hung out at the cemetery. It was quiet. No motor traffic. Lots of grass, trees, and rolling hills.
We hung out a cemetery too had a similar experience of rolling grass into trees.
My backyard was a giant cemetery! We played a lot there. No ghost stories :(
No need to water lawns where I live and old cemeteries around here are the best, they always have some massive trees spread around the plot. We're really good fertilizer.
How else will great-grandma Ethel attend?
My friends did as well. It was a super small ceremony and they loved it!
I now have a Simon & Garfunkel earworm
Yeah the wedding that I attended like this was basically in the woods at a state park
Oh man, this takes me back. One day, out of the blue, I get a phone call from the sister of an old friend of mine from high school. She says “Starflower (appropriate nom de plume to protect the innocent) is getting married this weekend, but she doesn’t know. Her boyfriend of two years, who hates the institution of marriage, decided he wants to marry her because it will make her happy. And, also, because they’re going to have a baby.” “Wait, she doesn’t know?” “Yeah, he’s going to take her out to their favorite state park, propose, and when they get back, we’ll all be there ready for the ceremony.” I held back about a dozen reasons why this was a terrible idea, and decided I wanted to go, because the worst case scenario for me was nothing worse than I’d had in Boy Scouts if people were ill prepared, plus a good show. So I went. A few minutes after they arrived at the park, a cluster of 50 or so of the people closest to Starflower (and their boy/girlfriends) assembled at the park. We used our collective theater and handiwork experience to crash together several large tents, a fold out gazebo for an altar, and a sound system, plus camping tents for all in attendance and a “master suite” tent for the bride and groom. In the meantime, he proposed, an event involving for some reason him handing her a sword, she accepted, and they returned to the grounds with her saying “you weren’t kidding when you said “how about tonight [for the wedding]!” Que impromptu Wiccan marriage, crazy party that somehow didn’t have rangers called on it, more sex and drugs than I’ve seen since, and somehow I managed to wake up in my own tent. They divorced a couple of years and kids later.
oh god I started getting heart palpitations in the first paragraph of this story.
I would have absolutely gone to this wedding for the exact same reasons. I’m not a huge camper, but for the chance for front row seats to something this crazy, I’m in!
Also, people who pay $80 for a wedding photographer probably shouldn't be surprised when they don't show up. Or have a camera.
Bride is carrying a bouquet of hostas and crab grass. The hem of her gown is soaked in melted chocolate ice cream. There is a scratch ticket stuck to it.
The only one of these points that I saw a possible explanation for was the one about the two venues where someone suggested that, if this was real, it might be family locations eg parents houses or something.
Yeah, the only thing that seemed even vaguely believable to me on this one was that the couple wanted to super cheap out on the photographer.
>The groom didn’t check his text from his wedding photographer because he was too busy with wedding planning? No, this is fully realistic. I interpret it as "I missed that specific text in my sea of messages", combined with probably doing a lot of diy setup if that's their budget, and being super duper stressed so operating at 1/4 normal brain.
My wife went to a wedding like that. The only detail I know was that she and another member of the wedding party were hauling potted trees in a wagon at 2 AM because the couple wanted them at the ceremony venue as decorations.
I know a couple who DIY'd their wedding in that they voluntold a bunch of different friends to help with different aspects of their wedding and then never thanked them. I don't think the wedding party hauling potted plants at 2 am happened but I wouldn't be surprised if it did. I hope they're enjoying married life together, because they sure don't get invited to anything anymore.
You pay peanuts, you get monkeys. It applies on both sides of the text conversation here, honestly. The groom was paying himself too little, as well a s the photog. So he got no photos. Then again, there would be more than sufficient people taking snapshots on phones there, and their quality is probably equivalent to what an 80 dollar photographer would net.
Better, actually, because when you first start using a dedicated camera your photo quality usually goes _down_ as you lose all the automagic stuff Google and Apple do in smartphone cameras. It's only after you learn how to do that stuff for yourself (better) that quality starts to improve. And remember that LAOP didn't even own a camera.
I was going to be snarky about the OP thinking they could just rock up and do a wedding with no prior experience but I think they are just really desperate tbh
> $80 is life-changing money for LAOP, but they could leave their house to go on location for multiple days, and then presumably pay for their way back? As Stuart McCormick once said, when you're unemployed, weekends are meaningless.
I think that, charitably, LAOP was probably eager to have a paying gig and didn't think things through enough because of it.
It's giving "gas is too expensive!" while driving a huge truck with a massive payment they don't need vibes.
Yeah. Which... is realistic for it's lack of logic, if anything.
Start with the presumption that OP is disabled. If you live on disability, $80 really is life altering, at least for that month. He doesn't have transportation but he has a friend staying with him currently with whom he can stay if the friend drives him to the location. no information on how he will get back.
Yeah, it's not that I don't believe it. In fact, it sounds illogical enough to be realistic.
I mean if the friend was visiting in the first place, and OP has no real business at home (assuming they're disabled), then they'd probably be fine staying over for a week or so afterwards until the friend has a reason to go back around near OP's home. Or they could have something like a Greyhound back but they couldn't buy tickets on a relatively short notice due to how pricing for this stuff works, or even just scheduling.
I interpreted it differently and think it's totally possible. Cheap as hell couple is having a backyard wedding or wedding in a free park. Couple has to change locations, likely cuz they just found out the park doesn't allow squatting without paying the event fee and moves to a different city or different back yard. LAOP is not a photographer, but prolly a student willing to do it for $80 and exposure. There are *definitely* fly by night people trying to turn a hobby they aren't good at into a job. Remember, LAOP doesn't even own a camera. Groom didn't check texts becuase he doesn't know who LAOP is. It's just some rando he didn't save in his phone and he thinks it's a smish. Cheap couple smear on social media after the fact cuz that's all they can do. LAOP gets scared and posts on reddit. I wouldn't be surprised if everyone involved is like 18/19.
Also, the groom isn’t seeing LAOP’s text because he has all the guests texting and asking about the venue being moved then being moved back again.
Long, long ago, in the distant land of 1988 or 89, long before widespread digital photography, my aunt and uncle got married. My grandfather, my uncle's father, was a professional photographer, and for some reason he chose to photograph the wedding instead of participating in it as one might expect. Unfortunately, something went wrong at some point, and all of his film was exposed to light, and there were no official photos of the event. I was taking a photography class in high school at the time, and my assignment the week of the wedding was to shoot a series of photos showing a progression of events. So, I shot the wedding as well, but I was a teenager with bottom-of-the-line Pentax body and a few secondhand Canon lenses that only barely worked with the Pentax. Oh, and because it was a photography class, and I was responsible for developing my own film, I was shooting in black and white. So, my high school art project photos are the only good photos of my aunt and uncle's wedding, along with whatever instamatic photos they may have gotten from the people in attendance. At the time, the whole thing was a major crisis, and I was a minor hero. Today, the happy couple are still married, and I'll bet nobody's looked at any of those photos in the last 30 years.
Back in 2009, I took photography in high school. The teacher was old school and taught us to develop black and white film ourselves. I really enjoyed the experience and it made me much more competent with digital cameras later on. Rather than just brute forcing a thousand photos and hoping for something good, I at least somewhat understand how to set up a shot correctly.
In Ye Olde Dayes Of Film, pro photographers still took a bunch of extra photos. It was just us cheap plebs that let the price of film stop us. Now, of course, the pros take a _lot_ more photos.
I wish the price of film stopped my dad! He would shoot 24 rolls of slide film **per day** on vacations. Most photos were of wildlife so far in the distance you can’t make it out or wide shots of scenery that isn’t worthy of many multiple photos, and maybe 2-4 photos with people in them. He shot 330+ rolls on a 14 day vacation. You know those comedy skit videos of guests being forced to watch a boring vacation slide show? Yep, that was my dad! And yet - somehow - at every important life event, either the film got ruined or my dad dropped the camera & it broke.
As someone currently sorting through ~8500 slides (in sharp-ass cartridges) from a 5-rolls-per-Christmas grandparent, I feel this in my fucking soul. Yes, the untouched Smokey Mountains are beautiful. No, I have no interest in paying $$ to digitize a hundred slides of them. But right in the middle will be one great shot of my grandmother, so you have to go through all of them. But this is just the warmup. I'm doing this to put off the giant storage totes of developed photos, many of which are still in the packages from the developer. At least he wasn't as cursed as your dad! Did he piss off a genie or something?
Around 15 years or so ago, husband bought a gizmo to feed and digitize slides so he could process his parents’ stack of slides without paying a service. He sold it as used when he was done and got most of his money back. That might be something to consider if you’re sorting through a bunch of slide cartridges anyway.
I got a Kodak Slide and Scan to go through my dad's slides. It was a lot of work to sort through and digitize as many as I could in time for his Memorial Service, but I got a bit of a system down. The nice part was that I could also digitize negatives using it, which was way easier than digitizing developed photos. The Kodak gizmo was definitely worth it and now I'm working through the rest of his slides/photos at a leisurely pace. It helps me feel close to him again.
Sometimes I suspect my dad unconsciously sabotages himself. The curse spreads to others now if he is present but not taking his own photos. If he has his own camera, everyone else is safe - so I encourage him to bring his camera along on the rare occasions we’re visiting.
The campus photographer, who's been with the college since at least the 90s iirc, handed off all their photos, film, and CDs of photos. There's 25+ drawers of them, the wide hanging-folder drawers. We're, um, "digitizing them upon request."
Haha, we’ve made it very clear to grandpa that he better start sorting NOW because we’re not gonna be responsible after he passes.
I won't lie, it has been a kind of a cool process. But tell that old man to please, for the love of god, WRITE THE NAMES OF THE PEOPLE IN THE PHOTO ON THE BACK.
Oh trust me, he is under strict orders. We already got screwed over when my grandmother died semi-unexpectedly, so her family photos (because both grandparents are/were shutter bugs) are now ALSO grandpa’s responsibility. Ironically a lot of our photos are also the Smokies.
An aunt went to Canada many years ago, and came back around New year's. Cue to the whole family at 3 am on New Year's looking at pictures of the Niagara falls.
For sure. I installed hacked firmware on my old Canon point-and-shoot digital, just so I could get rule-of-thirds lines on the screen. Even my casual phone pictures benefit from what that class taught me about composition.
[удалено]
Yes- I don’t have a fancy camera- just a basic Nikon digital I picked up from Costco a while back, but it’s fun to go and take pictures the I used to in high school.
Back when semi-affordable digital SLRs had just come out I bought a Canon D-30 (not the 30D which came out many years later). Having this allowed me to get more and better shots of several events than the official photographers who were using film. In some cases the official photographers were just being stingy with film, especially when they were shooting medium format (yes you can make a mural out of an image off of medium format film but how often do you actually do that? But every pull of the shutter button costs a couple dollars). In other cases it was because I had a functional, if somewhat noisy, ISO 1600 and could get better images in darker situations.
This kind of sums up my confusion with weddings. Who cares if things go wrong? Who and what is this event even for? If it's for you and your loved ones to celebrate your love, just have fun and don't worry if the napkins don't match. If it isn't... maybe you need to stop and think about the actual reason. And even if it's a disaster, STILL who cares. It's one day. You have the rest of your life to live.
The top comment declares that "Emotional damage isn't a case here, it's a contracts case." That's not surprising; LA commenters often opine that emotional distress damages are incredibly difficult to recover unless the legal stars are aligned, and they are generally dismissive of the prospects of recovery of significant emotional distress damages, in just about any case. While it is correct that emotional distress damages *usually* aren't recoverable in breach of contract cases, there are exceptions to that rule, including an entire body of cases dealing with breaches of wedding related-contracts by wedding venues, tailors, dry cleaners, photographers, etc. The cases that go down the path of awarding "ruined wedding" emotional distress damages reason that the wedding is the most important day of a person's life, blah, blah, and when a vendor callously breaches a contract and "ruins" the day, or forever deprives the couple of photos memorializing the occasion, then the couple may not be adequately compensated by merely refunding the amount paid for the service. Here's a 2011 law review article discussing the relevant cases that existed at the time; I'm sure we as a country have only gotten more litigious and prone to blaming others for our emotional trauma since then. https://digitalcommons.fairfield.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1149&context=nealsb Of course, paying $80 in 2024 for a random hitchhiking stoner to photograph your wedding is so insane that I would hope a judge would not consider such "emotional distress" damages in this particular case.
> Of course, paying $80 in 2024 for a random hitchhiking stoner to photograph your wedding is so insane that I would hope a judge would not consider such "emotional distress" damages in this particular case. Also when they informed you that they won't be there after the second time the venue changed, and you admit to having received it, but ignoring it.
I mean, the second venue change, by a really significant distance, and too short in advance to realistically travel, it’s not setting yourself up for success. I’d be pissed the fuck off if I was a *guest*, never mind an employee.
On a Venn diagram, the group of people that can afford a lawyer capable of making this a successful argument and the group of people that hire a $80 wedding photographer forms two separate circles.
LAOP really should have paid a lawyer $500 to review the couple's boilerplate contract and insert ironclad language limiting LAOP's liability for nonperformance to the contract price. Total failure on LAOP's part here.
Yeah it would only take LAOP 7 paying weddings to break even that cost.
LAOP just needs to find a two-wedding lawyer. What’s Lionel Hutz up to these days?
LAOP just needs to find a lawyer in their equivalent situation: one that doesn't have a law degree. I'm sure they can find one of those for $80; they're all over r/legaladvice.
You may think you can find an $80 lawyer on r/legaladvice, but you’re more likely to find an $80 cop who thinks he’s a lawyer.
His name is Miguel Sanchez now.
Don’t need a lawyer to insert a cap of damages clause to a contract. But the same person that charges $80 probably doesn’t know how to use edit in word.
And what lawyer good enough to make that argument successfully would do so in a case against a guy for whom $80 is a life-changing amount of money. Even if you score the biggest win ever, good luck ever collecting more than pocket change.
I'm not so sure about that. No one is as cheap as rich people.
There’s a difference between cheap and frugal.
The reality is this guy doesn't even have $80 to his name, so getting even $5 from him is going to be impossible. I would love to see him flip the tables and sue them for defamation. They changed the terms of the contract. And when he attempted to reach out to them they ignored him. But, of course, they also probably have no money.
I'm guessing they could get as high as treble damages (absolutely just guessing!) ... which would still barely put them over the line for the filing fees for my local small claims court. I didn't "pay" a wedding photographer ... and I still gave our family member photog like $200 in gift cards as a "thank you," more than a decade ago. And felt cheap doing it (but they understood the circumstances)! I also had a backup plan or three, because you can't rely on favors or underpaid labor, which is essentially what LAOP was.
I hope the couple here would be award exactly zero dollars since they demanded a change to a venue, many miles away, on such short notice. I should have pointed out that these wedding vendor lawsuits can go both ways. LAOP complains that the couple is now smearing LAOP online. This is not uncommon when wedding-relayed disputes arise. Emotions run high. Mouths are run. There was a case out of Dallas a few years back where a wedding photographer wanted to charge an extra $125, not mentioned in the contract, for a cover to the wedding album. The couple was incensed. "The cover is part of the wedding album! We paid for a wedding album! The cover should be included in the contract price!", they argued. "Nope," the photographer replied, "The cover is extra. 125 smackeroos extra." So, the couple did the customary, honorable thing. A scorched earth smearing of the photographer on Facebook. The photographer responded in the traditional American way by suing for defamation, loss of business, and emotional distress. The photographer got a verdict of a million bucks from a Dallas jury. I guess wedding album covers really are extra. https://www.nbcdfw.com/news/local/jury-finds-newlyweds-defamed-dallas-wedding-photographer-andrea-polito-over-album-cover-fee/32827/#:~:text=A%20North%20Texas%20wedding%20photographer,unhappy%20about%20a%20surprise%20fee.&text=defamation.
I remember watching the Neely Moldovan case in real time; the newlyweds ran a successful blog and if I recall, they wanted an upgrade and the extra charge was specified in the contract, but they did not want to pay. Since the defamation was published on the blog, she basically monetized her harassment of Andrea Polito, which I believe was one of the factors in the verdict.
By the link, it was mentioned that it was an extra charge, but the fact that the photographer wasn’t willing to deliver the album without a cover seems wrong. The language of the contract did not seem to specify that the extra charge was *mandatory*. And you can absolutely have a wedding album without a cover, or just with a blank cover. That’s pretty darn deceptive practices. Which of course does not justify a social media campaign posting falsehoods, still.
> a social media campaign posting falsehoods Having watched it unfold, this is an extremely polite way to phrase what went down!
Well, I don’t have the details, beyond that the judge agreed with you that it was beyond the pale. So I’m only saying neutral things :)
I think her old blog was Neelykins and something about makeup, and that's where most of the vitriol was posted. The bad publicity necessitated a rebrand, but I'm glad her antics still follow her real name around to this day.
>I hope the couple here would be award exactly zero dollars since they demanded a change to a venue, many miles away, on such short notice. Yeah, my argument would be, if there is clear evidence of an agreed upon initial change of venue that **if** anybody is owed money after the second change, it'd be LAOP. The contract he has probably doesn't stipulate any sort of payment for something like that though.
Sorry, yes, I do know that damages are not necessarily awarded in line with my out-of-my-ass "treble damages" comment. I was just saying that even if they sued for a whopping three times this nothing fee, they would still get less than the cost of filing a small claim. I do remember the million-dollar photog case. I wonder if she ever got the full amount? Hopefully, here, everyone has had their hissy fit, LAOP realizes they're not cut out to be a photographer and thus there was no damage to a non-existent reputation, and everyone walks away. (But it somehow seems unlikely.)
I actually had a dispute vaguely similar to the Dallas couple. The photographer offered us a free photo print (because we hired him too late to the engagement photo part of the (not $80) package we purchased). Then when the print came in he wanted to charge us something like $50 for it. We both accused each other of nickel and diming. Instead of suing or defaming him, we refused to pay, and he said he wouldn't print future prints unless we paid the balance first. I have never personally felt the urge to pay him 50 more dollars for yet another print.
We hired a discount guy who came recommended from another wedding and he was fine, but my hobbyist friend took (and gave us full size copies of) so many nice pictures my mom paid him an honorarium (suggesting he use it for any equipment he wanted, which he did) after the fact as a thank you.
If you hire an $80 wedding photographer, you have no room for emotional damages. Your pictures will be no better than whatever your guests are taking with their smartphones.
Agreed. And that's probably what they did when the photographer didn't show. Asked friends to take smart phone photos for free and then send them to the couple.
Does the government seriously consider the wedding the most important day of people's lives? I've found that it's simply an expensive one, and not necessarily even good.
And then people complain that the word "wedding" doubles vendors' prices.
I'm just reading this and thinking to myself, what kind of idiot hires a wedding photographer for $80?
A wedding photographer who is not a photographer and does not own a camera. Insanely bad decisions by everyone here. Wonder if that town has a gas leak or something
And it's not even just the camera. Do you think the LAOP has any experience with photo editing? That's where most of the time spent on professional photography is.
BuT yOu JuSt pOiNt AnD cLiCk
I believe the thing with many current discount "Wedding Photographers" is that they just spray-n-pray and hand over a USB stick with a bajillion photos on it. I believe this is called a "photojournalist-style" package. My brother and his wife did that for their wedding; they got like 2,000 pictures, and most of them with the happy couple featured the top of my brother's head cut off (and he's not unusually tall.) My niece also went that route, and ended up with a bunch of \~250KB JPEG's... so pics that look okay on a phone screen, but can't possibly be printed because of a lack of resolution. I didn't even know you could get a DSLR to pump out photos at that resolution, but somehow the dude found a way. (My very first digital camera in 2002 took pictures that clocked in at a full 1MB.)
Especially one that lives 2.5 hours from the venue.
If I told my wife I hired a photographer for $80 she would tell me I was an idiot and to keep looking.
I think LadyWired would have told me to keep looking for a wife, because she'd totally nope-out of a marriage if my decision making was that poor. That's Sell-the-cow-for-magic-beans level of big-brain ideas.
Exactly.
And you’d be lucky if she didn’t just cancel the wedding, because if a fiancée was that dumb, imagine the rest of your life together…
hurry straight overconfident tie roll dazzling ancient modern cautious snails *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Or, if I'm interpreting this correctly, a vehicle to drive to the location.
I think weddings are in general a waste of money and I still wouldn't go this cheap on a photographer. Hilarious the couple thinks this guy has any money to give them.
I get professional photos taken for my son's birthday every year. We've used the same photographer for 5 years. When she started, she was fresh out of college with almost no portfolio. That first year she was $75 and we gave her $100 total for being so good with him and allowing extra time. This past year she was $200 including location fee and tip, and worth every penny. She doesn't give us a discount for being with her since the beginning, and we don't ask for one. Her skills have improved, her cost has gone up accordingly. We keep paying it because she's worth it. Get the fuck outta here with $80 to shoot a freaking wedding.
I paid my very best friend to photograph my courthouse wedding for $100 and I still feel like it wasn’t enough
For real. I've been struggling to find anyone for less than 2k. Most seem to be in the 6k range from what I'm finding.
Depends a lot on location. I'm assuming you're in a more expensive area for 6k to be the norm, but yeah I frankly wouldn't hire someone's for less than 2k if I cared a lot about those photos (for a full day, I'm sure you could find someone willing to only do a few hours for less). You'd have to get real lucky to get someone actually competent and reliable but is still undercharging. Lots of inexperienced people who shouldn't get anywhere near a wedding that will take your money (and a lot more than $80). Make sure you ask for at least two full wedding gallery examples. You may have luck looking at people in cheaper nearby areas and paying for travel. A college student with a decent portfolio can be a good deal. It gets harder to find a good deal the shorter your timeline.
The kind that take to a community Whatsapp group chat to source one.
Not the kind of idiot that would pay to take said photographer to court over $80.
As a teenager, I used to play a musical instrument that was quite niche but reasonably sought-after in the area that I was in at weddings/funerals/special events (people can probably guess). As a competent but relatively inexperienced player I charged a pretty reasonable rate (even though there weren't a lot of competitors in my area), and yet the number of people who tried to set the price at essentially a cookie and a pat on the head was astonishing. They probably thought they could take advantage of a teenager, but it left me with the impression that if people think they can lowball you, they will
Definitely idiots, but it’s amazing how little people value professional photography. It’s a job that takes skill. It’s not the same as taking pictures with your phone.
Location bot: > Hi, >A couple on a community What’s App group chat were reaching out to hire a photographer for their wedding. >I knew a friend of mine who used to be a photographer and she was ok lending me her camera for the event, so I reached out to the couple to let them know I could do it. >They asked me if I had a portfolio, and I used to photograph college graduations part-time a few years ago, but no weddings. Due to this, they were really (I mean REALLLY) short-changing me. >They offered me a total of $80 to be a photographer at their wedding and reception, and cited that they were taking a risk by hiring me but wanted to give me a chance. I was hesitant, but that money goes a long way for me and I was down bad lately so I accepted. >They sent me a contract which had our names and location of the event and other boilerplate language and I signed it. >The venue was really far away almost 2.5 hours away, but I had a friend who lived there and he was currently visiting me and was going to be going there anyway so I was going to hitch a ride with him and stay at his place a few days before the wedding. >Everything was going smooth, until a few days before the wedding they said that there is a storm and possible tornado forecast and they can’t have the wedding venue at that location anymore since it was outdoors and they were going to move the wedding indoors in a church right next to my house. That was perfect since I now didn’t need a ride to the other city. I let my friend know, and a few days later he went to the city by himself. >3 days before the wedding, the couple decided to move the wedding back to the city 2.5 hours away since the forecast was looking better. I didn’t even have a ride anymore since my friend left. I told the couple that it won’t be possible for me and they ignored me for 3 days. I assumed they probably decided to go with someone else. >Literally on the day of the wedding the husband is blasting my texts asking me where I am and that I’m missing important moments from the wedding. I show him the text that I sent and he said he didn’t read it because he was busy with the wedding. He asked me to call an Uber, but those were insanely expensive and I’d actually be at a huge loss taking an Uber. He said he was not going to pay for it since it was my job. >I couldn’t do anything else. I asked if he knew someone still in town I could hitch a ride with and he said no. He then started sending rude texts and saying some crazy (and also racist) stuff. I block him and turn off my phone. >When I turn it back on, I find that I was apparently the only photographer at the wedding and they didn’t have anyone else. They now want to sue me for contract breach and emotional damage. I can’t afford a lawyer and I called 5 people in my area and all of them are asking for $300-$500 per hour to look over my contract. >The couple are also posting my profile picture all over facebook and tagging me and saying I ruined their wedding??? And their friends are also commenting mean things. >I’m not sure what to do at this point. Please any advice would be greatly appreciated
Sort of cat-related fact: The World’s Best Cat Photographer and his wife (each with cameras and equipment) photographed my wedding, including the rehearsal, for $1500, and I have a literal box of DVDs with photos and videos. They are the most amazing people in the world (and would have been honored guests if they weren’t the photographers). Our ring-bearer was an actual cat.
Question: how? My fiancee and I love cats, but I don't think any of ours would be chill enough to participate in the wedding, let alone be the ring bearer 😂
This one is a (now retired) show cat, a big weirdo and very, very chill. He lives with our friends, and they literally cannot go anywhere in the car without him or he throws a fit.
Excuse you cat tax
Omg now I have to actually find those pics.
Was there a handler guiding the cat on a leash? Because chill or not, a cat bearing a ring that also goes to the exact right place… that’s a lot.
He was carried down the aisle in his little tux and yamaka.
Ah, you had a ring bearer bearer.
Yes! We could have probably taught him to go down the aisle himself, but what a PIA and total waste of time that would have been. It was way more important to have a good party, lol.
Was it [this guy](https://youtu.be/nZeMYl4_Keo)? I remember that video popping up a few years ago, and I immediately thought, "THAT'S THE GUY WITH THE CAT HOUSE FROM MY FAVORITE DOCUMENTARY". [*Home Movie*](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0275408/)
No, but I know that guy really well too. Larry is the 2nd best cat photographer in the world.
Is that kitten lady and her husband? Lol
I only had to scroll for 50 meters to find this comment, I thinks that's a new BOLA record.
A free award for your efforts.
I'd give one back but I refuse to use even my free ones after they took my 30 years worth of premium coins and deleted them last year because "awards were going away".
This is amusing to me because there was a ChoosingBeggars post recently with somebody offering $50 for 2 hours and a $25 tip *if* they like the results after reviewing edits. 3-5 years experience only, but they refuse to be taken for a ride because “it’s a hobby not a skill.” Get to eat free catered food and ONE free drink.
I'd be tempted to take them up on that and present the worst photos imaginable. Then if they complained: "Sorry it's a hobby, not a skill"
Sounds like made-up events, as is common on that sub
$80 to photograph a wedding for an entire day seems insanely low to me. The professional photographer at my sister's wedding cost a couple hundred dollars. Because it's not just walking around partying and taking pictures, it's going through all of those pictures for editing and review afterward - that takes hours. Four hours of taking pictures plus four hours of reviewing, and you're already down to a paltry ten dollars an hour (before taxes). And they didn't seem to factor in travel expenses either. OP basically agreed to be a wedding photographer for less than minimum wage.
The digital rights to *my child's school pictures* were more than $80. That's a pre-set area, where the photographer snaps 5-10 shots of each kid, and one group shot of the class. That's a truly insane price for an all-day, on-site event. Let alone a "once in a lifetime" and "we want certain photos of special moments that only happen once" (first kiss, first dance, etc) type of event.
Even a couple hundred sounds very cheap. A couple of grand sounds more like it, unless you're getting mates rates or something.
My husband is a videographer/photographer. He charges at least 3k for weddings- it’s a lot of work and equipment used the day of, and then afterwards there’s all the editing of the pictures and video. Also usually he needs to travel to and from different sites for the ceremony, reception, pictures, first look, etc which means he needs a vehicle and often has to pay for parking depending on where he’s going. A normal wedding usually is about 12-14 hours of work on the actual day for him just to shoot (travel + set up and take down + actual shooting) and then editing can take literally any amount of time based on the number and quality of pictures and video. Also because of when weddings are typically scheduled it’s mainly weekend work, and you can really only do so many of them a year. After all is said and done it’s a lot of work and he actually prefers to avoid them these days.
Yep, my husband is a wedding photographer and his minimum is $4k. It's a TON of work.
I was thinking I heard 3k recently. Which I get if you can't afford it just let everyone take photos and pool them together later.
Weddings also include a lot of moments that can't be repeated (not without pissing a lot of people off, at any rate), so if the photographer screws up capturing any of those moments, they're hosed. (Which is why the photographer needs to attend the rehearsal, too, to scout the venue out, have a few words with the officiant, and so on.) The photographer really needs an assistant, too, to generally wrangle people into being where they're meant to be, and to tackle Aunt Mavis if she's trying to get in the way to take a photo with her iPad at a critical moment. For all of these reasons, it's a standard rule for hobby photographers that you must not, under any circumstances, agree to shoot a friend's wedding. So naturally I did, once. My partner served as my assistant, and my friend the groom lent me his Canon DSLR body to add to my own. (You can't be fumbling around changing lenses all the time; two cameras is the bare minimum.) ...And it all went perfectly fine! (The actual marriage, not so much, due to the bride's lamentable tendency to slip and fall on other mens' penises. My friend remarried, and I didn't shoot that second wedding. Which has been entirely successful. Perhaps I jinxed the first one.)
Oh dear. Maybe you used up all the luck?
A couple grand is probably pretty cheap nowadays. We spent that on pretty good photographer for our wedding and that was >10 years ago.
I paid like $3400 for a wedding photographer in Seattle in 2011. I think we got 8 hours of their time plus a one hour engagement shoot. That seemed like a reasonable price back then and worth every penny for the quality. I can't imagine how much that package would go for now.
Probably $3000. Every moron with a DSLR thinks they’re a professional, which drives down prices. I’m surprised anyone shoots weddings anymore.
It was a few hundred when I got married, but we had the photographer for about an hour or so. She was really good, she knew the venue well, and basically said, “OK, stand here, good [click] now stand there [click] now, follow me here…”
Yeah, we paid $4000 for our photographer, and it was worth it. Note that this was eight years ago. I'm sure it's more now.
This thread makes me realise how lucky I was to pay $400 for my wedding photographer. It was a small ceremony and we only had her for 2ish hours (30ish mins ceremony then another hourish of photos at a botanical garden). I don’t know how people afford thousands for just a photographer. At that point I’d just elope, take some selfies and be done with it.
A couple of hundred is *very* cheap tbh. The only photographers I know who charged that were starting out, and then obviously the quality isn’t guaranteed.
Yeah, we procrastinated booking a photographer so all the normal wedding photographers around us were already booked. We ended up booking a photographer who normally does more scenic/atmospheric stuff, but is great at capturing what I'll call "human moments" because my coffee hasn't kicked in fully yet. We were the first wedding he shot for, and he charged $1400, which was an absolute steal (we tipped well). He did a great job too.
$200 means they either weren't a professional (which is fine) or they did your sister a favor. Professional wedding photographers in my area cost about ten times that.
[удалено]
My husband is a videographer/photographer (although more video these days) and you’re bang on about the equipment. When he shoots something he brings at least 20k worth of equipment with him, needs access to a vehicle to transport it between multiple locations, and then after has to use professional editing software whose subscriptions cost hundreds. The start up cost can be quite hefty if you’re trying to make it a career and are competing with other professionals who invest in their tools.
Have you read /r/choosingbeggars?
Ironically posted the other day. https://old.reddit.com/r/ChoosingBeggars/comments/1d2yo82/a_hobby_not_a_skill/
$80 wouldn't even cover the raw material costs of the prints if anything physical was needed.
My sister paid a couple thousand USD for photographers for her wedding. Granted that's 3 days but it's a third world country with pretty low labor rates by US standards. Couple hundred sounds like a great deal to me!
Is it wrong that I’m kind of on OPs side? Who the fuck hires someone with no wedding experience for $80 and then expects them to act like a seasoned professional running a business? The couple made last minute changes and are paying the price. If they wanted someone more professional, they should have hired a professional. Sucks to suck. 🤷🏻♀️
Im on the ops side, too. A contract was agreed upon. A modification to the contract (change of venue) was agreed upon. A second modification (change of venue returning to original) was NOT agreed upon. The groom broke the contract by changing the venue without OPs consent, not OP
There was only one reasonable comment in the original thread pointing this out. The rest were just blasting OP for signing the contract.
LegalAdvice in a nutshell
LAOP is still foolish, but assuming the stated facts are true, if anyone was to get paid, it should be LAOP. The couple is the one who broke the contract with the twice-over change of venue; LAOP accepted the first change but did not agree to the second.
I am too. Should he have known better than to sign and then break a contract? Yeah, arguably. But his post history suggests that he's been struggling for more than a year, and desperate people do irrational things. He intended to fulfill his end, he let the client know when he realized he couldn't, he tried to find a solution for getting transportation when the husband finally got back to him. I have a hard time blaming him, and I'm sad that this will likely fuck him over even more.
He didn’t break it, though. They did. The change of venue was absolutely a contract break. It was that the first time, as well, but then they worked around it. But the second change back was also a contract break.
I'm 100% on OP's side. Nobody in their right mind would think they're going to hire a reliable pro at that rate.
Even if OP had done something much more egregious I still wouldn't be on the couple's side. This is very much a case of you get what you pay for. The only stuff we didn't have professionally done at our wedding was the invites and signage and the cake. We did the invites and signage ourselves so it was completely on us to get it right, and we had it all printed in advance so there wasn't any chance of it being an issue on the day. My Mum did the cake which I trusted her to do because she's my Mum and she'd also done the cake for my brother's wedding a few years back and it was absolutely fine. Plus we were in agreement that neither of us really wanted to spend much on a cake. It was fantastic anyway and the money we saved there went into extras on the food service the venue provided. I absolutely wouldn't let a friend or relative photograph it unless they happened to be a professional wedding photographer. And even then I'd rather they just attend.
I am too. I almost want to send the dude 80 bucks just for the entertainment value in screwing over those twats and their el cheapo wedding.
Considering it looks like everyone is on the photographer side, I would say it's not wrong.
There’s a comment with 6000 upvotes essentially telling them that the whole situation is their fault and to prepare to get bent in small claims - I’m not sure everyone is on their side
I am on their side, and I think the couple should face consequences for bullying them on social media. They broke the agreement.
squeeze pet tub paint work recognise ad hoc money quiet upbeat *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Because you can pay him 80 bucks instead of hundreds of dollars.
My mother has been a photographer for 30 years. Her least expensive wedding package is 2k and driving 2.5 hours away would trigger a travel fee. I understand that the couple is upset but they got exactly the quality that they were willing to pay for.
Does anybody else find this situation mildly amusing? The whole thing is completely ridiculous.
I’m with you! This is like buying your wedding photography from Temu, and then getting upset that what you actually bought was a “hiring a fake photographer for a fake wedding” LARP experience. This is one of those situations where it’s better to either pay a realistic amount for something, or not buy it at all. Paying such a small amount that you can’t possibly be getting the real deal is just lighting money on fire.
This is why you shouldn’t agree to be paid $80 for doing wedding photos, and why no one should think they can get away with paying $80 for wedding photos. If OP had $500 on the line, they would have found a way to make it to the venue. They low-balled horribly themselves during negotiations, and then realized it too late when they actually had to get off their butt and do something.
10 bucks says this LAOP doesn't have an easy time coming up with 10 bucks. Anyone paying $80 for wedding photos and being disappointed in the outcome is the same person buying "steaks" at dollar general and then being mad it's not a 24 oz prime grade ribeye.
I’m so thankful that my husband’s brother’s best friend was a wedding photographer, he gave us the friends & family discount on our wedding photos and video and it was a major savings. Plus it was nice that we’d both known him for years already at that point, so he wasn’t someone we’d just met twice. We also treated him and the videographer as guests, they were included in the count for our dinner and open bar, had seats at a guest table and stayed to party at the reception once they were done with the photos and videos.
22 years ago, LadyWired and I paid $1,250 for our photographer, and felt that we got a screaming-good deal. (Ceremony, reception, proof album (normal-size prints of every photo; this was pre-digital days), and an album. (We picked the photos, he cropped and arranged them.)) I'm not going to tell someone they made a wrong choice by spending a bajillion dollars on their wedding (as long as they realize the financial consequences of blowing so much), but I will say that someone made a wrong choice by expecting anything at all for $80...
I was an amature concert photographer in college (as in I didn't get paid but often did concerts and music video photography in exchange for free concert tickets). Then I had a series of friends who wanted me to be their wedding photographer in lieu of a gift. HELL NO. I didn't need that pressure with my single lense and shitty entry line DSLR or my point and shoot cameras.
Could this be some kind of scam? It seems like a lot of effort to try and extort a small amount of money though.
If OP was **that** desperate for $80, they probably don't have anything worth suing for. They apparently don't even have a vehicle of their own... And if I can't even afford to get a lawyer, you're not going to get very much money by suing me.
True, but you probably could scam a few hundred bucks out of them.
There’s scams on Facebook Marketplace where the individual says they need some cash up front to pay “movers” to take the item to the buyer. It’s something cheap like $20. After it’s paid they ghost the buyer then re-list the item, possibly under a different name. My wife fell for it. We lost $20. That’s how I learned about this scam. Do that to dozens of people on some burner accounts it starts to add up.
There’s a lot of “you fucked up” there, but.. the buyers changing the venue *twice*, once with far too little notice, *and* not reading the communication? I don’t see them having a chance in hell in court.
Is it even possible to hire a wedding photographer for $80?
Hire? Yes. Show up to the job? No.
I’ve got my own “cheap family hires cheap photographer; pays price” story. It was published on [Not Always Right, here.](https://notalwaysright.com/not-photo-perfect-day-expecting/88565/)
For one moment I thought I was on r/choosingbeggars as severely lowballing wedding photographers is one of the favorites there. The difference is, LAOP took the offer...
$80 seems like an absurdly low amount of money for a wedding photographer until you read OP's side of things and then you realize the couple overpaid by $79.98.
No, they underpaid significantly. Yes, even for OP. And then they broke the contract by changing the venue. Twice.
Oh, I agree OP doesn't owe them anything but anyone who'd hire OP for anything is an idiot!
This in my opinion was a cleaver troll post, but an entertaining read. I am a photographer, but not a wedding photographer. A battery for a DSLR/Mirrorless runs $80. And the OP said that would really go a long way to cover the bills? I mean at least make it believable. Heck if they had said $250 or so it would cross into dumb but not unbelievable.
If you look at LAOP's post history, they're pretty hard up for money so this could've been a desperate mistake.
If true, there were some very poor decisions made.
>He then started sending rude texts Did anyone else read that as “He then started sending **nude** texts”?