Life has been a crazy, hectic whirlwind of work (new job!), school (final exams!), and wedding-related fiascos (more on them later), so it's nice to take a break to update the hive.

So far, everything seemed to be going swimmingly with the wedding plans. We had our venue, our photographer, our cake, etc. We even had TWO engagement shoots. One was shot by a gentleman whose children I used to babysit. He offered to do an engagement shoot for us for free!!! I was ecstatic! He is super talented, and if you ever need a photographer in Atlanta, Georgia, James Barker is your man. For realsies. Check out his website: www.jamesbarkerphotography.com .

Here we have a few of the best pictures he took that day:

Photo by James Barker Photography

Photo by James Barker Photography

Photo by James Barker Photography

Photo by James Barker Photography

Funny story behind the very last one: Mr. Unicorn yawned just as Mr. Barker took the picture, and it looked like he was chomping down on my head. Naturally, we edited it to make it look like he’s a zombie about to eat my brains.

On the not-so-positive side of wedding planning, we decided to fire the photographer we originally booked to shoot the wedding. I hated to do it, but I felt we had no choice. We had booked How Beautiful Photography back in January. I made the mistake of signing a contract without consulting Mr. Unicorn first. He’s a photographer, so it would have been smart of me to bring him along for the interview; he knows all the right questions to ask when it comes to photography.

Long story short, we were deeply disappointed by our photographer’s lack of professionalism and organization. The first red flag: she lost track of the payments we had made, and she sent me a message on Facebook, asking me to confirm that we had paid $300 so far. She was off by $100; we had paid $400. I sent her the correct number, offering to send her copies of the checks that we had given her, and that was that. I wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt.

What happened afterwards was just ridiculous. The following is an excerpt from a Facebook message she sent me:

“…explain to me your process of booking [your venue]. how much, what kind of payments have you made or do you have to make?”

Basically, she wanted me to change venues because she doesn’t like the owner.

Um. No.

I showed the email to Mr. Unicorn, in case I was overreacting, and the first words out of his mouth were, “She’s fired.”

I’m very disappointed in how things turned out with this vendor. Our engagement shoot with her went ok, but she lacks basic photography skills, not to mention professionalism.

On the bright side, though, we found a fabulous photographer to replace her. His photos are to die for, and I can’t wait to see how he does at our wedding. Best part? His prices are very reasonable. Check out his site at http://chriswithcamera.wordpress.com.

Has anyone been disappointed with vendor drama? How did you handle it?