I haven't given up, no no. It's been a while and a lot has gone down.
For starters, the whole Photography situation put us in a bit of a dilemma for a good week or so. While it would have been really cool to have my high school friend do the photography, the cost to have her there exceeded what we originally thought. The packages were extremely reasonable... if it was a local wedding, but paying her to get down there was way too much between airfare and accommodations. It just didn't make sense. I feel bad for not choosing her, but we can't do anything that isn't possible. HOWEVER, we gave ourselves 3 options...
Technically, we could have her down, so to give a total cost it would have been:
Kristy -- Total Package with E-shots/wedding and tons of goodies such as books and prints $2,999 Add in Travel expenses, and it's an additional $1,200. Looking at a rough estimate of $4,200. Still a lot cheaper than some of the people in Orlando already, but they have the Disney experience.
Misty -- She was a choice that we thought would be great. We liked her style (at first, I'd admit, wasn't my cup of tea, but I've grown to it) and the price was similar to Kristy's with the travel fees.
Root -- Root is, was and always would be our main choice. We love their style, and taking out all the reviews on the Disboards, we'd still pick them mainly for their looks. It's also nice that it's a 2 person team consisting of a married couple who strive on having the best! Not to down play anyone else, but they just seem to go above and beyond. The downside was the price. Eeks... We got their pricing guide and we didn't know what to make of it. However, we knew great pictures were going to come at a price. We slept on it overnight... okay, maybe 3 nights. I think at one point it became apparent we couldn't afford them and added a supplement option instead of Root.
Cory -- Cory's look was good and simple. We wanted to get more information, so Heather sent him an email....... a week later... no response.
At this point, confused with which to choose, we added the possibility of using PhotoMingle. We've been talking about it for months now and we really were excited about its use. We got our quote, had a lot of our questions answered, and it was almost a done deal for us to get.
Until that is when I came up with a plan on how to get Root part of our wedding.
We know we want a lot of hours. We have a long day ... adding in DP, it turns into a 8-10 hour day. We also want shots of us getting ready and all. So we factored in 10 hours.
We aren't doing the E-shots anymore since our plan was using the e-shots as our STDs, but if we are going down 6 months prior for the planning, the STDs aren't needed that late in the planning. We also decided to eliminate the canvas wrap. This leaves us with Package 1, with 4 hours. We did the a la carte options to add 6 more hours and we have a VERY decent package price for what we want; a lot cheaper than what we originally saw a week prior.
So, Root it IS!! These pictures are definitely worth a thousand "extra" then some of the other options, but they will mean so much more to us, and we are glad we are going to get what we want!!
After emailing Root a few times, we came up with an awesome addition. I wanted to take my groomsmen out for a guys day out (similar to a bachelor party, but watered down). I've been going back and forth with the same old activities like parasailing, jet skiing, etc. But then I thought of the Richard Petty Driving Experience. We could all do a ride a long for a little, then go to dinner at either the ESPN Zone or outside Disney, the Medieval Times Dinner. I also sent an email to ESPN's Wide World of Sports to see if we could a private batting practice type deal.
All in all.. the plan for this day would be to have Root follow us during the experience and shoot our couple hours. They loved the idea.. now we just need to work out the details.
So, X on PhotoMingle (too much cost, and don't need it since we have an awesome Photography team), X on Eshots (for now, Heather still wants them, maybe up in PA in Novemberish)... X on Misty and Cory. Actually, Cory called Heather just yesterday, a week after our original email. Oh well!
And to our surprise and excitement.... Root is our Photographer.
Yes, it has been a long week and a half.
(In all seriousness, the floods were crazy up here in the Jersey/Philly area. And yes, we did see a tornado, too close for comfort for me)
