Wedding Horror Story: Our Wedding Photographer Ghosted Us One Month Before Our Wedding!7 min read

My wife, Tori, and I had our own personal wedding horror story one month before our wedding day.

31 days before our wedding, Tori was scheduled to have her bridal portrait photoshoot with our wedding photographer.

The week leading up to the shoot, everything seemed fine.

Tori went back and forth with our wedding photographer, George, to set up the time and place for the shoot.

Plans were made for a date and time, but after a few days, there was no confirmation from George’s end.

And this is where the wedding horror story begins.

Our wedding photographer ghosted us 1 month before our wedding!

Imagine this…

There we were; my wife was over the moon excited for her bridal shoot, one of our dear friends traveled into town just to do Tori’s hair and makeup, and then…

…

…

Nothing.

No call, no text, no email, Facebook message. 

Nothing!

At this point, trying to keep positive, we did all we knew how to do at that moment and was carry on and hope for the best.

So, Tori and our friend, Lauren, went ahead with the hair and makeup and we traveled over to his photography studio hoping for a miracle.

Nothing.

We called and got his “partner” on the phone. 

Nothing.

And it turns out, this unfortunate soul was just a guy who shared a space with him.

And guess what? George ghosted him too.

I felt about as bad for him as I did for us because he was now fielding our ex-photographer’s angry customers because he was regrettably linked to him. 😓

My wife was devastated…

And pissed!! 😤

…And honestly, worried.

Until this event, we actually really liked the guy.

In fact, during all of this, there were really only two questions that kept coming up.

#1 What the f@#$?!

And #2…

Is our wedding photographer dead?

Honestly, this is what we believed. True story.

The other photographer that had shared a studio with him said his van hadn’t moved from their parking lot in almost a week.

We basically did a welfare check by going to a few of the local bars that he went to, or even part-time bartended at, to check if they had heard from him.

Still…

Nothing.

He had no social media engagement.

His phone eventually came up as a disconnected line.

His website didn’t exist anymore.

And we couldn’t access the originals of our engagement photos!!

You heard me right.

This wedding horror story has multiple levels.

Oh, yes. There’s more.

Did I forget to mention that we did a package with this photographer? 

The package included:

• Engagement photos
• Save-the-dates
• Bridal portraits
• Wedding photography
• Wedding videography

And we paid half of it upfront. 🤦

Yup. We booked him for EVERYTHING!

And before you go judging us for picking a bad egg, rest assured that Tori and I are HUGE RESEARCHERS.

Tori didn’t even have to use any special tactics to get me involved in the wedding planning when it came to picking our wedding photographer.

I was all up in this part of the process!

And yes, we followed all the step-by-step guides to choosing the right wedding photographer that we could get our hands on.

Sometimes things just happen, even to planners like us.

I mean, our photographer had great reviews on The Knot, Wedding Wire, Google, Facebook, and his work was excellent.

We even personally interviewed him and other photographers before making our selection.

He was our guy and honestly, our engagement shoot was a ton of fun.

But, since his website didn’t exist anymore, nor did his SmugMug account where our photos were stored, we were SOL.

Tori even reached out to SmugMug to try and recover them, but there wasn’t anything they could/were willing to do about it, because of course there wasn’t.

So, all we were left with were the computer quality images we downloaded onto our laptops to share on social media.

Turns out, having our wedding photographer ghost us one month before your wedding really sucks!

Admittedly, not a sucky as having to replan your entire wedding 2 days before your supposed to get married, but luckily that didn’t happen to us.

Let’s recap our story so far.

The emotions and conversations of our wedding horror story

😅 “Wow, glad we finally have our wedding photographer, that’s a relief.”

😀  “I really like this guy. It was awesome that we were able to get dinner and drinks with him after our engagement photos today.”

😃 “Wow, these engagement photos are beautiful! Also, our save-the-dates look amazing!”

😟 “George hasn’t messaged me back to confirm the bridal portrait shoot, should I be worried…I’m sure it’s fine.”

😡 “What the f@#$?!”

😨 “Do you think he died?”

😢 “Wow, I can’t believe he’s dead. That really puts life into perspective.”

😟 “Wait, we should download all of our engagement photos before his subscription runs out.”

😤 “Are you f@#$ing kidding me?! His entire website is gone!”

😭 “Now I don’t have bridal portraits or our engagement photos.”

😱 “Wait, we don’t have a photographer or videographer for our wedding! What the hell are we going to do?”

Yeah! What the hell were we going to do?

Want to hear the rest of the story?

Check out what Tori and I did to manage this crappy wedding horror story in part 2 of this series, which I’ll publish next week. Stay tuned!

In part 2, you’ll learn the step by step emergency action plan Tori and I went into to make sure we had a wedding photographer at our wedding in case something like this happens to you.

And as for the wedding photographer that ghosted us?

Did George actually die? (that would REALLY make this a wedding horror story)

Funny enough, Tori ran into George bartending around town 2+ years later. (He lives!)

My brazen wife walked straight up to him and said, “I’m glad to see you’re not dead!”

Without looking at her, he passed by and jokingly laughed it off.

She asked him, “what the hell happened?”

And to no one’s surprise, he didn’t really have an answer.

The best she got from him was something about his grandmother needed him, so he just stopped working.

So, apparently, this choice meant screwing over everyone else in his life.

When they were face to face, Tori asked if we could just access our engagement photos (didn’t even care about the money at this point), and he said “yes. I want to make this right.”

And that’s just what he did… … …