Yesterday, Josh and I went to the Brown-Pusey House in Elizabethtown to see if we liked it for our wedding, since it’s the only thing local that’s not ugly at a decent price. My aunt got married there 15 years ago, but I didn’t remember what anything looked like. When we got there, I thought it looked a bit small - but it was absolutely gorgeous. I knew it would be great. The only downer? We’re going to have to have a dry wedding. The way the law in Hardin County is written, you have to have a caterer with a liquor license to serve alcohol at any event, AND caterers have to serve a certain amount of food to be able to serve alcohol. Well, we want to cater our own wedding to save money, so that was just going to get way too expensive. So, sparkling grape juice it is. The drunkards in our families will have to get over it.

There’s just one thing I haven’t been able to fit into our budget, and that’s a professional photographer. For the really good ones, you’re lucky if they have packages starting at $1500! That’s just obscene to me, especially for digital photos. There are cheap ones out there, but sadly, you get what you pay for, so it seems, as the pictures aren’t great. And some of the expensive guys are REALLY REALLY GOOD - but some of them aren’t! Seriously, if you’re going to charge that much, at least make sure you’re worth it.

I’m also not really into the ones that make you pay EXTRA for a full copyright release to the digital negatives. I mean, it’s your own fucking wedding. That’s just rude.

And see, I’m quite capable of editing and printing my own photos (hello, Photoshop, I think we’ve been friends about 10 years now?), so I don’t really need that service - which is where most of the cost really goes. So I can’t fathom why in the fucking world a woman would give me a custom quote of $1300 for shooting 4 hours and just handing the pictures over on a disc. You have GOT to be kidding. You’re basically just charging me for the actual time spent shooting, which is over $300 an HOUR. Get over yourself, bitch.

Thus far, I’ve found an okay guy that charges $595, including copyright release. The guy I want is Todd Nichols. His photos are absolutely amazing, perfect, everything I want. His prices aren’t listed on his website, so I requested a quote, but at that kind of quality, I’m sure it’s way out of my budget. And that would be totally understandable.

I requested about 10 other quotes last night, letting everyone know I’m working class and don’t need to be charged out the wazoo for their fabulous editing sk1llz or super awesome photo album prints. Crossing my fingers!

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