There is nothing worse than opening up your emails to see a message titled “Please Help!”. It was November 17th when I received an email from Sarah, and the contents of this email broke my heart to read. This was the first sentence alone, -“Katelynn, I am extremely regretting not going with you as the photographer for our wedding day.” Sarah had reached out to us not too long ago that she wanted to use our services for her wedding day. We did end up being a little over their budget so she went another route to find a photographer within their budget. They had their wedding in October, and a month later, their wedding photographer broke the bad news to them. Sarah continued to explain to me that her wedding photographer had lost their images due to a “corrupted SD card” & they only had images from their reception. This is obviously every photographer’s WORSE nightmare. We try our best to make sure this doesn’t happen, take all the necessary precautions, but hey, technology can fail. I did mention to Sarah that this can happen to any professional photographer, but it saddened me that it wasn’t handled in a more professional manner to resolve the issue in other ways. So, this is where I knew I had to step in, clean up the mess, and make the best lemonade out of the sourest of lemons!! 😉
Now, before I go into all the detail about this amazing day, I have to take a moment to really touch base on how this sadly goes to show that, finding the “right” wedding photographer is an essential part of your wedding day, if not the most important! Your wedding images are the only thing that gains value from years to come after your big day. Unless you have videography; without good quality wedding photos, you won’t have anything to look back on. These photos are memories otherwise forgotten if not captured. These aren’t ” just pictures”, these are images of people you love, moments you might not even knew happened, and time stopped for a second for you to gaze upon it in a different way than you may have at that time. I can’t strain this enough to my couples, but as a professional wedding photographer, it’s OUR job to really explain to you what it’s all about! So, make sure you do your research, compare wedding photographers reviews, work, pricing, what they have to offer, what you will get in return, and every little detail. Spend the time in making sure you BOTH absolutely LOVE everything about them, from their brand, photography style, and of course, their personality! You didn’t rush finding your husband or wife, and hey, I’ll look for my future wedding photographer that seriously, so you should too! This person will work with you from anywhere to 1-2 years, and if they’re great, you’ll probably be in each-others lives for a very long time! Don’t you want someone worth every penny?! This story breaks my heart, and I wouldn’t wish this upon anyone, but I hope others can learn from this! =)
SO, where were we?! After emailing back & forth, Sarah was under the impression she was booking us for a “Bridal Shoot”. Little did she know, we were working behind-the-scenes to pull together a mini “Ceremony re-do” for she & her husband. We reached out to Sarah’s wonderful sister, Kaitlin (yes, all Kaitlin’s ROCK!), to help us pull off the surprise & get her family involved as well. We also contacted 4 extremely talented vendors, Flowers of the Forest to do the flowers, Your Hunny’s Bakery to bake the cake, Jessica Jenkins to second shoot with us, Northern Rustic for the table, and also reached out to the wedding venue where it initially all took place, Addison Oaks-Buel Estate! Needless to say, the story touched all of these kind souls & they donated their services, time, and talent to help bless this couple with a wedding re-do!
On December 22, 2016, we all came together to pull off something pretty special for Sarah & Joe Manni! Jessica & I arrived early to Addison Oaks to start putting together the table, decor & other elements for the day. Soon after we arrived, so did Flowers of the Forest & Your Hunny’s Bakery. God truly brought an incredible team together to pull this off & it went off without a hitch! Sarah’s wonderful father & sister also surprised US, that day, with Channel 4 News to come & cover Sarah & Joe’s wedding re-do story! Their was such an overwhelming amount of love that day, I can personally say that it was definitely one of my favorite days in my life, by far! We are truly so grateful that God brought Sarah & Joe back to us, even though these circumstances were not ideal, things didn’t work out how they were initially planned, but in the end, everything went better than we could have imagined & we helped them capture some amazing memories! Thank you SO much to everyone involved, we couldn’t have pulled it off without you all! I will let the pictures do the rest of the talking as well as the video at the end of this post! Enjoy!!
HUGE THANKS to Jessica Jenkins – K.Polidan Photography’s right hand gal/second shooter, Katherine & Arielle from Flowers of the Forest, Anna from Your Hunny’s Bakery, Boyan from Northern Rustic, Dan & all the staff at Addison Oaks, Paula Tutman & the Channel 4 News Crew, and all of Sarah & Joe’s family who helped make this all happen! We cannot thank you enough!
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