Complementary Engagement Session, Help!

Wow I’ve never heard of that. I’m so sorry. Our engagement pictures were part of our package and we got over 100 pictures back.

Wow, no I've never heard of that. Are your wedding photos the same?

Wow I've never heard of that. That sounds pretty shady and just for that I probably wouldn't want to work with them. Not if they aren't honest up front and sneak stuff into the contract and say nothing about it.

Theta crazy

Daughter's wedding photography pkg included a looong engagement photo session (4-5 hours in multiple locations) and complete access to all 200+ edited photos. I'm sorry your photographer wasn't more clear about these charges. Double-check you wedding coverage -- does it include download and print rights to all photos, or are you going to have to pay more for those as well? Daughter's pkg includes full access to a minimum of 800 fully-edited photos. (For comparison purposes, her wedding and engagement packages were a total of $2700 in So Cal.) Good luck!

That's super strange. Definitely feels like a bait and switch. I would go over your full contract in depth, especially the ownership clauses to make sure there's not something funky with getting your wedding photos.

We got a cheaper wedding package but we could add on engagement photos. It was a extra 100. We got a hour and a half. Over 600 pics.

This is really sad and I’m sorry you’re dealing with such underhanded behavior

Wow.sorry to hear this. what an awful start to things. That’s unheard of. Really nothing complimentary about the shoot if you have to pay for the photos.

That is totally not what most photographers do. That photographer should have informed you both before the photo session for that matter. I personally feel like that was shady and underhanded like Alyssa said. I would not do future business with that photographer. Just imagine, are they going to do this practice if you hired them for your wedding?

She should not have used the word complimentary as this implies the entire photoshoot will be free, including the photos. That's so unfortunate and sneaky!

That is SUPER deceptive! I also would never have thought it was JUST the session that was complimentary.

Definitely unprofessional of them to not make something like that clear to you guys and definitely shady practices to call it "complimentary".

We had this exact same issue with ours. It was never mentioned to us that the session was complimentary but the pictures weren't. We decided to not purchase any (we had to purchase prints of the individual pictures in order to get the digital copy of that print...the cheapest print was $40...no thanks). They got very offended about it and it was very uncomfortable. They ended up heavily discounting the pictures for us so we ended up buying 6...which still cost us $140. It was enough to make us almost cancel our photographer and book someone else two months out from our wedding.

Due to the confusion, they ended up gifting us a wedding album for free, which would have cost us $840.

That does seem super shady to me! It would make me want to change photographers!

Hey Jennifer!! Like some of the previous comments mentioned, I have never heard of anything like this either. Every photographer is different though so it's hard to say what usually happens or how they're supposed to operate.

Have you decided to do the complimentary shoot and pay for the photos, or are you going to skip the shoot?