Belle Rouge Studio

Shelly was a great professional to work with. She responded to emails quickly, usually within a couple hours or the next day. I met Shelly the day of the wedding and she was very nice. I also added another photographer to her wedding package to get 2 different perspectives of the wedding...I am glad that I made that choice! Shelly and Angela (the other photographer) had opposite personalities. Shelly was the Type A personality. She wanted to make sure everything was shot perfectly and that everyone was acting accordingly. For example, two of my bridesmaids were talking while getting lined up for the girls’ pics and she kind of scolded them and said something like, “Ladies, I am over here taking pictures...I need you to smile and look this way.” Angela was the Type B personality where she was really easy going and fun. She was taking pics of the groom and his side and you can tell from the photographs that they were having fun.

During the wedding, I forgot that they were even there! So, they did a great job not making themselves known! After the wedding, they took a bunch of pics of my DH and I. Again, it was great having both of them because Angela got some great shots from different angles that we wouldn’t have with just one photographer. I am disappointed in the pictures of my DH and me by ourselves because it was so windy on the beach that my bangs were flying and it looked like I had those 80’s bangs! I know that is not their fault, but I wish they would have told me because I could have had tucked them behind my ear or borrowed my sister’s hair clip. So, now I don’t have any pics of the DH and I that I love where you can see our faces. That makes me very sad!

As I look back at my pics, I regret that I didn’t get more fun pics taken with my bridal party. Shelly took pics of us inside waiting for the wedding to start. I was sad that I didn’t make her go kick the boys out from the beach area, so that we could have fun pics of us on the beautiful beach. Someone asked her for pics on the beach and she blew if off. I should have been more assertive, but the whole day was like a whirl wind. I am also a little put off by her because when I received my CD of the images from her, two files of pictures (about 60) were missing. I emailed her to let her know and she said that that was weird because they were on her computer. I was not upset, I just wanted to know how I was going to get the pics. So, she told me how to save them to my computer file at home from her website. That’s a great solution so that I can have the pics now, but I thought she would have offered to make me another CD with all the pics on it. So, I download 60 pics on to my computer on my own time and made myself another copy of all my wedding pics on a CD.

Overall, Shelly and Angela worked very hard the day of the wedding! They were constantly taking pictures. We invited them to dinner and they ate their meals fast and then kept working. They were great and for our budget they did a fantastic job!

My biggest regret is not spending more money on photography. It is like everyone says, that is the memory you have of your wedding that will last. And to each his own, you may feel that photography is not all the important to you, so you don’t want to spend too much money. Personally, I love the art of photography and I personally felt like I didn’t get that. I had a hard time convincing DH to spend more money on photography, so we looked at the photographers within our budget and Shelly was the best! So, we got what we paid for. I just wish that I didn’t listen to him and chose the photographer that I really wanted. If I had done that, I wouldn’t have this feeling of disappointment with our pictures. (Just as an FYI...I would have gone with Tim Zielenbach Photograhy).