Sandals Photography?

I do not have expierence with sandals but I am getting married at a Secrets and the photos are pricey their too. I emailed my wedding planner and she was able to send me example videos of the pictures. I would recommend doing the same thing, it at least gives you the idea of the quality.

Is this Sandals Cancun? I have a bunch of info on photographers in Cancun.

How much were they asking?

I got married at the Hard Rock in Riviera Maya, and opted not to go with the resort photographer, because they were expensive and their pictures were awful.

Can you hire an external vendor? You'll probably have to pay a vendor fee (we did), but it will be worth it for pictures you don't hate.

@SunshineJenn - Who was the resort photographer and who did you go with?

SunshineJenn- you can only do their preferred photographers. And they are out of this world expensive!

PurpleKitten- There are no Sandals in mexico; I am going to Jamaica.

You can ONLY do your preferred photographer?! Every other resort makes you pay a fee to use someone else.

Yeah, that or theirs photographers....

OMG that super-sucks.

We can get a different photographer if we want to, but there is a $500 fee. We aren't excited about the preferred photographer, but their prices are about a thousand dollars less than anyone else - and that doesn't include the fee, so it would cost us $1500 more to use anyone else. (FWIW, they're charging $3400 for 8 hours of photography and an hour of video.)

Where are you getting married?

Where are you getting married?

I am sorry this is happening to you, and I gotta say that I don't like/totally disagree with this logic of preferred vendors which I find absolutely unethical.

Some venues have a list they build themselves with vendors they actually like working with. Unfortunately, other venues (most of them, actually) ask vendors to either pay to be on their list, or ask for a percentage when clients book them. Those don't guarantee quality.

This is probably the case for your venue, since there is also a fee to not use those vendors (which I find ridiculous).

If it were me, I would give them a piece of my mind, hoping to get rid of that fee (think that they make 500$ for NOTHING here). But I wouldn't tell you to do that. I would tell you that, if photography is very important for you, to find the money and hire someone you really love. There must be someone out there around that price, maybe without the hour of video. And by the way, what is an hour of video anyway? This makes no sense.

Riviera Maya at one of the Iberostar Resorts.

We're paying the $500 to use an external vendor for the DJ. The internal guy is a total shmuck. As for photographers, though,.... it seemed to be the best price by far.

If all you hear is bad, then avoid them. Either you sacrifice quality or figure out a way to splurge for the better photographer. Photography is a priority for me, so I'd be hiring the quality photographer.

Can you use their photographer? I think we paid by the picture at sandals Royal Caribbean. My avatar is one of them.

I would not use a sandals photographer. They pose you in the same canned postions and they're not really trained all that well. I got married at a sandals in my first marriage and paid to have an outside photog come in. I also bought a few of the honeymoon pix they pushed on us while we were there and they're.....okay. They're not anything wedding worthy.

Janeen,

The issue is outside photographers are 3xs as much... Idk what to do!

They're totally hit or miss. the photographer we had our sunset shoot on our honeymoon with was terrible. we didn't end up buying ANY of the photos. they were either blurry or completely unflattering.

the couple next to us had GREAT photos though. from a different photographer. :/

i was really disappointed...

A friend of ours used them and I think they are terrible and cheesy. They lacked originality, creativity, and proper use of lighting. Lucky we have a friend who takes wonderful photos and videos. We decided for the price of sandals pictures/video we would just pay to have him stay the required three nights.