I get the expensive equipment. I realize that you have to make money. I understand that especially for weddings, it’s a high pressure business. So while I chuckle at the price of wedding packages (of course, anything wedding related is overpriced throughout all business aspects), I do actually understand that you will put in more hours than that 5-10 hours which I will be reserving on my actual wedding day. I also know you have an extremely high overhead to pay off for likely a one person or very small business.
I think much of your marketing makes sense. It is a very special day, and we want photographic records of it. I like looking through my parents’ wedding album, and I hope my children will like looking at mine, too. (If I can afford one. I probably will make my own on Shutterfly or something though rather than pay you hundreds of extra dollars to do the same thing.) I also understand that you feel if you have a good sense of artistry in your shots and ability to use Photoshop, I should pay you for your style. Agreed. If I like you and your style, I will want to hire you.
So here’s where you bug me. Two of you sent me marketing materials within 24 hours that made me want to yell at you. And it’s not wedding planning stress that is rearing its ugly head. It’s your assumptions and attitudes and that you think you can send it to me and because I’m a bride, I’ll buy into it and feel comforted or inspired or more likely to hire you over someone else.
No.
When you send me literature telling me you will make me look good on my wedding day because I “will have the best photo prop ever: a groom” and can use him to pose and cover up my flaws; or you send me a rant email hating on beginner photographers offering free photography so they can build up their portfolios—I want to tell you to specialize in a different arena. Go work at Glamour Shots.
My groom is not a prop. He is an autonomous human being making the decision to commit and marry me. He is taking a big step, a huge risk, a financial and personal and emotional investment like nothing he’s ever done before. And so am I. I am absolutely not looking for an extended party time to have you make me feel like a model or take me-focused portraits like I finally have reached the big day by which I have been told I will be defined. Marriage is about much more. Our wedding day, in which we will exchange sacred vows and officially be bonded to begin a life together as equals and partners is not about me alone. And to be so sexist about my groom being nothing more than a prop offends me deeply. To be so sexist and patronizing as to assume that telling me I can use him to mask any physical part of me I want to hide offends me, too. I don’t need him to hide behind. I want him just as present in the pictures. I don’t want photos of only his profile or the back of his head so that I can be posed as prettily as possible. That is so selfish. What a terrible portrayal that would be of the day we are promising to place the other first in our lives.
As for new photographers—how arrogant of you to send a hateful, demeaning email about how they’re stealing away your business and will most certainly disappoint their friends. You had to build up a portfolio. I bet you even had to do some for free or low cost until you proved yourself. If you’re so worried about them taking away your money, do a better job at getting hired. Maybe lower your prices to where the average couple could hire you without placing excessive burden on themselves or family or whoever may be paying for you to snap some pictures and then possibly edit them. By the way, my friends with fancy cameras can use photoshop or facetune or pretty much any digital software just as well as you can. I can even make myself feel prettier with my own iphone apps (and by the way, I didn’t need to use my husband-to-be as a prop to figure out how to take flattering pictures of my friends or myself. You should be able to do that without making my man into a tool to cover up the fact you can’t figure out how to get a nice angle).
Your arrogance that someone must pay thousands of dollars for your time and probably more money just to have rights to pictures of themselves is ridiculous. If your services are nothing more than a status symbol to the couple who think spending tons on a photographer makes their day more special, then what value is your art worth on its own? (Because guess what, no one else besides the couples’ parents, and maybe grandparents, will ever care about the wedding photos in the end). Unless it’s the bride who loves staring at her own face while her propped groom probably only gets a side shot of him kissing her cheek at the most…and this will hang in their home where no one cares or only thinks how self-centered she still is until they divorce and she throws it away anyway.
Also, your sexist assumptions and attempt to mollycoddle a bride by feeding into the idea that her wedding day is all about her is terrible. That perspective holds women back. I am not defined by the fact I’m getting married, and when you tell me it’s all about me because I’m finally getting “my big day”, you demean me and my existence. You are telling me I must be perfect on that day so I can feel proud of it. As if no other day in my life before or after my wedding day matters. You will not tell me that if my photographic record of that day doesn’t make me seem perfect, I must have failed as a bride. My worth is absolutely not tied into that day. My life is about more than getting married. If I never got married, I would be just as important. If I never got married, I would still have no right to treat someone else as a prop. I hate that your marketing and philosophy are part of the message to my single friends that they aren’t important yet. I hate that your marketing tells my married friends they will never be as important again. I hate that this whole wedding industry tells women their wedding days are only about them and it better be perfect— according to some standard that exists only in theory and just out of the average bride’s price range.
Our wedding day is about what happens that day. It will be special. It will be beautiful. It will be kind of scary. Because you need to realize, I’m worried about the next day, the next decade, the next 50 years. Because I want to be the perfect wife. And that doesn’t mean I’m no longer important after my wedding day. And it definitely means I better not be focused on myself that day. Because that is a terrible way to start married life.
When I step into that dress (which I found on Craigslist, by the way, for an amazing price, and will still be able to buy groceries this month), I will be wearing it as a symbol of how sacred that day is and how solemn my vows will be to me. When my groom puts on his tux and waits for me to join him at the end of the aisle, he will be ready to put his life into my hands. His hopes and dreams and fears are just as real as mine. His commitment that day will change his life. We are two people who will be joining our separate but equal lives. We hope to be surrounded by the people who mean the most to us and who have shared our lives with us to that point. Because we will be honored they have joined us. Your photography is just to help us remember that day and those good times and memories. It’s not about you.
How dare you assume the man who will become my husband that day is only a prop. How dare you assume that if I trust a friend to record that day that they will fail or we will be disappointed. How dare you assume I believe I have a right to think it is all about me. And how dare you assume our marriage will be based on our wedding day.
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