When I started planning my May 2007 wedding, I was overwhelmed with the amount of time, energy, and efforts that went into planning a wedding.  My wedding was put together in 3 months, we started planning in February and got married in May and needless to say those three months were the most hectic, tiring, and overall crazy months I have been through.  We wanted to cut corners for my wedding, but one aspect that I refused to was photography.  I have always been interested in photography and love taking photos of my own, so it made perfect sense that photography would be one thing that I would choose wisely and carefully.

Planning a South Asian wedding can be difficult, especially in a community where there haven’t been very many South Asian weddings before.  As I was one of the earlier ones to get married (I got married when I was 20), it was difficult to rely on what others used. Most of my friends were sophomores in college still and none of them married, so unfortunately I couldn’t rely on them to provide me with any feedback or suggestions for photogs.

My dad and I eventually began our struggle to find a great photographer who would understand our needs and wants for a Bangladeshi wedding.  We had all received suggestions from my flower coordinator who happened to be a Persian woman.  She had suggested a Lebanese photographer and upon her suggestion, my dad and I went and visited his office.  This guy had incredible photographs that he had taken for weddings he worked on and I immediately fell in love. However, the package I wanted was $8,000 and while I wanted photography to be an integral aspect of my wedding—I definitely wasn’t willing to place that huge of a dent in my parents’ pockets!

Eventually, our floral coordinator had given us the number of a Gujrati photographer located out in San Fernando Valley and not too far from my house.  My dad and I went to his office—at first it seemed really dingy—located almost in remote area near a liquor store and we were a bit taken back at first.  When we walked into the Gujrati photographer’s office, it was a mess—a COMPLETE mess! An OCD person like myself could not stand to sit in there for very long, but I had to.  Despite the mess, the photographer showed us his work and videos (he did both—covered photography and videography) and I had ABSOLUTELY fallen in love with his work.  This photographs were amazing! Since he was South Asian himself, I think he knew more of what his peers would want and like in wedding photographs.  There were incredible pictures of mendhi, details, sarees, etc and I just had to have this
photographer for my wedding.

My father and the man bargained (I’m sure your South Asian parents do as well!) and came to an agreement and settled on a price.  For $3,800, I was getting a DVD of all my events: our combined Holud, our Akth and our Wedding Reception along with unlimited photos that he would be taking during all three of those events.  While wedding photography prices seem to be rising every year, we thought this was a reasonable package and decided right away that we had wanted it.

My horrors did not start until my Holud…little did I know, the photographer I had booked did not end up showing up, but instead a man to whom he had outsourced the job to.  I was so incredibly furious I didn’t know what to do.  Should I be enjoying my wedding day or holding a grudge against a man who had not delivered properly?!  At all three of our events we had a photographer who had absolutely no business being there—he was a fulltime Mechanical Engineer and a part time amateur photographer.  Throughout our wedding, we had to call the photographer to take pictures and he seemed to disappear often, which was very unprofessional!

When I received my prints I was incredibly disappointed… I knew they wouldn’t be as great as the ones I had seen in the office, but I didn’t expect what I had gotten.  I had felt like all the money set aside for the photography had gone to waste.  However, our DVDs did end up being really nice due to the fact that the original guy that we signed a contract with had done it himself.  We also didn’t get our photos and DVD until about 7 months after our wedding, which I thought was way too long!

Moral of the anecdote—when choosing vendors, whether it be photography, makeup, hair, any sort of vendor—make sure you know exactly who will be showing up on your wedding day—you do not want to re-live my photog horror story!!

- S., 22, CA
If you have a sweet or sour story about a wedding vendor, your bridal party or anything else related to your wedding, email us at thesaricladbride@gmail.com! We promise to leave your name annonymous–all we need is your first initial, age, city and state.

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