Wedding Wednesday – Picking a Photographer
This post is the second in my “Wedding Wednesday” series. I want to document parts of our wedding planning process without turning this into a full blown wedding blog, so I’ll just be picking a few Wednesdays throughout the year to share our progress.
The first post focused on our search for a reception venue. Check it out here! Today I’m talking about picking a photographer.
Due to the overwhelming number of photographers available in our area, I reached out to friends and colleagues who had recently gotten married for recommendations. I also searched through The Knot and Wedding Wire to find photographers with excellent reviews and pricing within our budget.
I was surprised that just looking through online portfolios helped me narrow down our options. There are certainly different styles of photography and I realized I wasn’t a fan of some of them. I have no idea how to articulate that using the correct terminology – so I’ll leave it at that :).
After reaching out through email to get an idea of pricing and what’s included in the various packages, we set up meetings with our favorites. We knew we’d need at least 7 hours of coverage, an engagement session, and a hard copy (USB or CD) with printing rights.
Kerri Moss Photography
Our first photographer meeting was with Kerri Moss, who’s based in Reading. I noticed everyone else was willing to meet us halfway, but Kerri requested we come to her studio – a small room in a community art building. It was cute, but since we had to drive over an hour, I thought we could have just as easily got the job done at a Panera.
To be honest, I had no idea what to expect, but it was definitely more awkward than I imagined. She didn’t have any sort of “sales pitch” or overview to offer us and I basically ran the meeting by asking questions. It worked out in the end, but just caught me off guard. Jay and I both walked out wondering why she didn’t sell herself or give us any reason to pick her over someone else.
Overall, her pictures looked great and her pricing was fairly reasonable, but we didn’t click with her.
Jenna Herring Photography
Our next meeting was with Jenna Herring, based in Lenhartsville, PA. I found out about Jenna after seeing pictures on Facebook of a coworker’s son’s wedding. I absolutely loved the ones I saw and my coworker highly recommended her. Plus, her package pricing was cheaper than most other photographers!
Admittedly, I had very high hopes before our meeting (always dangerous). Luckily though, she exceeded them! Her personality fit extremely well with ours and we loved her philosophy of including everything we’d want in one package without needing expensive add-ons.
She did a great job explaining her approach to shooting a wedding and provided a very helpful sample timeline for a wedding day to show how she ensures we fit in all the pictures we would want.We decided that night to pick her. It was such a relief to find a terrific photographer at a reasonable price. One more thing checked off our to-do list!
If you’re in the Lehigh Valley / Poconos / Philadelphia area and are looking for a photographer, we also considered Stesha Whitney (recommended by a colleague) and Birds of a Feather (excellent reviews, gorgeous pictures).
My next Wedding Wednesday post will feature our search for a DJ!
P.S. I’m joining To Travel and Beyond for their weekly Wedding Wednesday linkup!
This is a great and honest review! I am sure you will absolutely love Jenna Herring. I am a wedding planner in the PA/MD/DE area and have heard great things about Birds Of A Feather. Thanks for joining the link-up, I can’t wait to see what else you have to post about planning wise. Thanks for joining the link-up!
I love your link-up! It’s great seeing what other brides are planning / talking about : )
Have you not heard the old saying if you can’t say something nice don’t say anything at all. I find it really sad that you start off your post with a negative experience with someone, she may be a perfectly lovely person but she didn’t want to sell you because she may have known you didn’t fit her . I hope that she doesn’t see this, just because you didn’t like her doesn’t mean anyone else won’t. Not everyone fit’s and you could potentially be taking clients away from her this little bit of mud slinging could sway them before ever meeting her and those clients could be a perfect fit with her.
Thanks so much for reading and commenting. I agree that not everyone fits and I want to share my true thoughts since someone else might have the same experience. Of course other people might meet with her and love her, but I’m only writing about my interaction. Since this is just my own personal blog, I want to be as open and honest as possible when I give my opinion about trips, books, or businesses.
One of my friends went with Jenna Herring and was very happy with the outcome, the pictures were wonderful! I on the other hand actually had my wedding photos done by Kerri Moss after a co-worker had her wedding photos done by her. I loved meeting in the studio, which was much more quiet and personal than a restaurant. The work of hers I saw was great, and she really listened to what I expected and hoped for in my photos. The end results were more than I could have hoped for! Every shot was perfect, and I will truly cherish our wedding album forever. My co-worker told us that on their anniversary they even received a gift from her in the mail. It hasn’t been a year yet since our wedding, so I will see if we are surprised! But my husband and I are so happy that we went with her. I can’t imagine having my photographs done in any other way and recommend to her to everyone that I know.
That’s terrific! I’m glad you had such a great time with her and are so happy with your photos. Since we had different experiences (and I can only write about my own ha) it’s helpful for other readers to know. Thanks for sharing!