<p>My wedding was on June 14th. My photographer passed out business cards to guests saying by July 25th the images would be ready for viewing (even though our contract said one month out of the wedding). So I waited patiently because she did an amazing job with our wedding (with her personalizism). July 25th came (two days ago) and I asked about the pictures through email and she had said we needed to talk. Gave her my number and she called...<br> She politely informed me that a year's worth of work and planning is gone. She only had 100 pictures from the wedding left on her camera. She didn't back up the images and her hardrive crashed and she couldn't get them back. I lost my breath! At the moment, I tried to be very understanding and say "these things happen" but now I'm pissed.<br> I don't think these things just happen when you do your job properly. The first thing she should have done was to back up the files. Our contract doesn't specifically say anything about what they would do in the event that something like that were to happen. But she offered a full refund and offered to pay for a photoshoot with her choice photographer here in Hawaii. Our wedding was a destination wedding in VA Beach because of family purposes. My husband is in the military and it would have been way to costly on our family for them to come to Hawaii.<br> So.. aside from having 100 images from the tail-end of our reception (including pictures of objects, blurry images, funny faces, dancing) bigger problem is... none of my family is here. It is only my husband and I. So we will never get that day back. Everything we paid for is GONE - We will never see it again in still images. There are four pictures with my husband and I together and we can't use any of them: Blurry, funny faces, etc. <br> We had a list of must haves for her to shoot and now, nothing. The only pictures I took with my mom was with the photographer because I knew I would have those images. We didn't pose for any guest cameras. The images I have from guests aren't good quality because they were having fun themselves (open bar :)! ) and I wouldn't expect any different. We paid (/still paying) A LOT of money to make this day happen and we feel like we were really let down. It wasnt just a wedding, it was a family reunion.<br> Thank god I had the sense to get a videographer but I don't know what footage he got because we asked him to mainly shoot our first dance. Everything else would be a blessing and a bonus. We kicked the videographers out majority of the time to give the photographer the space to work as she wanted/ needed. The videographer was a (gem) Craigslist find that went above and beyond. The photographer that lost the images was a professional that our venue has a contract with.<br> I am just so bummed as well as our families. Because my husband is in the military we rarely get to spend them with them. Some of our families we hadn't seen since we were kids. Has anyone ever heard of this happening before? What was the outcome?</p>
