Photographer! Part 2

I know I promised the rest of my photographer story a long time ago. Well, today's your lucky day! (Plus, two posts in one day!)

So to recap, we had met with 4 photographers, and #4 was looking like our guy. The next morning, we met with photographer #5, Coury Deeb of 502 Photography, over coffee. My impression of Coury was positive, and I really liked his photos. (With all of our photographer meetings, I had asked to see examples of weddings from start to finish, which I highly recommend you do also.) Coincidentally, he also used to live in Philadelphia, and has done wedding photography there, and I felt like we had the same sort of city vibe going on. Since our venue is downtown with lots of cool architecture, I think he will do a great job of taking advantage of our surroundings and creating some cool, funky shots.

At the time I had first contacted Coury to set up a meeting, I took note of his package prices, but on the morning of our meeting when I went to double-check, I noticed he had raised his prices, and he was now technically out of our budget. I raised this concern with him, and he explained that he had just raised his prices for the first time in nearly two years, but since I had contacted him before his new prices had gone into effect, he would be willing to compromise and meet us halfway. I thought this was extremely fair, and also very gracious of him.

Over the next week, I bugged him for more examples of his work, and he shared some online portfolios from other shoots. Everything was awesome, so we signed the contract! Our package does not inclue an engagement session, but since we already had one, I don't feel the need to have those photos. The other advanatage of an engagement session, of course, is to have the opportunity to work with your photographer and get to know how he or she works and how you interact, before the day of your wedding. We're not going to have that experience, but it's not the end of the world. I can tell by all of our interactions so far that Coury is really fun and easy-going, but ready to take charge when he needs to, and that's just the sort of personality I'm looking for.

(I don't have access to any of his photos to re-post here, and I wouldn't do it without his permission, so if you want to see examples of Coury's work, head on over to his website yourself.)

Here are the other things Coury offers that I thought were really cool:
-No time limit on the wedding day. He's ours for the whole day, which means I won't be worried about a clock ticking down. Don't worry, I won't be mean and make him show up at 6 am or anything!
-Same-day edits that will be shown during the reception. How cool is that! It will be a fun thing for our guests (and us!) to see.
-Rights to all of our digital negatives. This was one of my #1 must-haves when looking for a photographer. Right now, I just don't see a wedding album fitting into our budget or our lifestyles (moving a lot, small apartment), so I would prefer our photos to be on our computers. If we want to get an album later on, or create one ourselves, we can.

I'm really excited to work with Coury next spring. In the meantime, I've been tagging photos I really like in Google Notebook (he said he wouldn't mind if I did that) to show him. Some are poses I think work really well with a large wedding party (which we definitely have), and others are reminders to me of detail shots I want to make sure he gets. This is one aspect of the wedding I'm really, really happy with, and I can't wait to see our photos!