I think it's necessary to pick a professional photographer. But I am wondering how you friend found a professional photographer for only $700. Maybe for only 1 or 2 hours service? Based on my knowldege, it is very costly for hiring a professional photographer, that's also one of the reason we dropped the ideas of using videographer.

Here is the process I went through:

- Browsing different photorgrapher's website and finding what's the style in the market.

- Then, talking to photogphers, preferrablely in person, and finding their package price and business style

- Evaluating my needs and budget, and specifying my expectation. Like us, we like photo journalist style, at the same time, we need to take formal pics with family members. Another example like, we have a very very long wedding, about 15 hours, so we prefer a package with unlimited service hours. Also like, we don't like the wedding album some photographer offers, so that's something we can negotiate.

- We kept doing the research and finally we found the one suits all our needs.

Hope it helps.

[此贴子已经被作者于2006-3-15 21:57:35编辑过]

Another tip, asking for reference check to ensure the quality of the service. I talked to two of his previous clients. It helped us make the final decision.

[此贴子已经被作者于2006-3-15 22:00:12编辑过]

Oh....

We chose photography and gave up videography. We watched a few finished wedding video works when talking to a videographer. It's very lengthy, about 2 hours long, and dull. To be honest, it's very boring to watch it. It's not because the video is about other people's wedding, if it's ours, we don't think we will watch it from the beginning to the end either.

On the other hand, photos are more classic and artistic.