This review is for Mary Veal Photography from our wedding on May 2, 2015 at Hawks Caye Resort in…read moreFlorida. I will preface this review by saying that Mary herself was very nice and was as sweet as could be leading up to and during the wedding. However, we were utterly disappointed in the end result of our wedding pictures.
We communicated our general disappointment to Mary who offered to retake photos of us for free. However we do not live in Florida as this was a destination wedding, we would have to pay for a flight down, and get a hotel room. We would also not be re-capturing the magic of our wedding. Upon sending another more detailed email to Mary with more specifics on our frustrations, she responded in an extremely defensive and accusatory manner, and actually blamed the quality of the pictures on many things associated with our wedding, including our guests. She took no ownership for our disappointment and instead decided to make excuses for everything that we brought to her attention concerning our disappointment. After a few emails back and forth, Mary did eventually offer us $500 back. We declined this offer, as it could not bring back the day and the moment. After careful consideration we asked for $1500 as a consolation for the poor service. Mary declined to agree to these terms and stated that she believed that no amount of money back to us could make us happy. For $5000 price tag that we paid for her service, my wife and I felt the result of the photography did not match the price.
A few examples of our disappointment include:
There were very few pictures of my wife and myself that we were happy with. We have some pictures together, but almost none of which we would care to post on our thank you cards, album, or mantle. Mary responded to this by asking how many photos we were planning on posting on our mantle or sending in thank you cards? Because in her experience it is one or two. Although I agree, we should have options to select that one or two, and we simply did not.
Almost every picture we received that was taken during our entrance to the reception had a blast of light or halo surrounding the images in the pictures. There is a bright lamp or light in the background that dwarfs the images in the picture making it look like a total mistake. We had no usable picture of our reception entrance.
In some of the pictures, there are frames where peoples heads are cut off, the centering is off, the feet are cut off, etc... She responded to this by telling us the artistic focus may not be the centerpiece of the photo. However, this is not what I was referring to at all. In one particular picture of our family, our cousin's (a Marine) arm is cut off by the frame in a family photo.
There was a general lack of detail in many of the photos. Clothes on the floor, items on a table, store stickers in pictures of shoes, people not facing the same direction, ect...
There were key parts to the wedding itself that were completely omitted. Our friends were able to capture some of these moments with their cell phones but not our paid photographer.
Overall the photos received back were bizarre. There was little or no creativity, the photos lacked attention to detail, and there were many photos that were off center, cluttered, and messy. Of the 586 photos we received there were only about 6 that we considered usable for some type of display, however, none of those 6 we were extremely happy about. We did not have many options to select from.
When we brought all these items to her attention she responded with excuses and said "I did nothing wrong". Although we were not looking to point fingers at who was wrong or right, we were looking for empathy and a solution. Unfortunately the reaction of our photographer was to take a defensive position to justify each area of disappointment by making excuses and blaming others for the result we received, rather than provide empathy and understanding for a disappointed client. This is unfortunate and this is not expected from an entrepreneur in any business. The examples I provided you were not in any way to challenge her talent as a photographer., but rather illustrate our frustration as a customer. She seemed offended about our comments, rather than making a satisfactory offer to make it better, and more concerned in absolving herself from any responsibility. Her response should never be projected as fault of the customer. Unfortunately we were not happy with our pictures and we feel like we did not get what we paid for.
I realize the quality of service is different for everyone, but in our opinion, our expectations were not met and the price of the service greatly outweighed the talent. We would not recommend.