My fiancé, Rob, asked me to marry him in April last year and we set a date for the wedding for August 27th this year. I am a huge fan of planning ahead, so we started looking for a local photographer for our wedding last summer. We found one we liked and she was local (a big plus), so we met with her and decided to book her for our wedding. She took a $700 deposit (just a little over half of the final cost of the package) on our credit card on 9/25/10. The package included an engagement shoot, which we decided to do right away. We called her to schedule and about 2 phone calls from us trying to get ahold of her and 4 days later she called us back. We completed the photo shoot on 10/2/10 and got the photos, which we were happy with, around a month later.
Fast forward to July 7th this year. We had made some changes to the plan for the wedding, specifically the start time. I called Jen Carroll to discuss the changes in the timeline so that I could make sure that the new start and end time would work for her. I needed to know that she was okay with the changes so that I could communicate the updated timeline to the rest of my vendors - the church, the caterer, the band, etc.

I left her a message on her cell phone, the only number I had for her, asking her to please call me back so that I could verify the new times with her before moving forward. When I called her cell phone, I got the standard voicemail greeting that recites only the cell phone number. There was no outgoing message of any kind stating that she would be out of town and unable to reply to messages. Come July 15th (more than a full week later) I had still not received a call back. I left her another message on that date asking her to please return my phone call. On July 20th there was still no call back, and I left her yet another message, in addition to using the web form on her website requesting a call.

I was starting to get desperate. She had no storefront, so there was no other way I could try to get in contact with her. My fiancé called her the following day, July 21st, leaving her YET ANOTHER message asking her to call us back. By July 22nd, with 5 weeks to go to the wedding, I felt I had exhausted all of my efforts in trying to contact her and decided to book another photographer.

It just so happens that on that day she finally returned my phone calls. Rob and I called her and told her that we felt that 15 days was an unreasonable amount of time for us to wait for a reply and we requested our deposit back. We told her that we were not interested in a studio credit as we did not feel she was capable of holding up her end of the bargain and felt that she had acted unprofessionally by leaving us in the dark for 15 days. At this point, I just wanted my money back. She agreed on the phone that she would give us the deposit back and took our credit card information down so that she could process the refund. At the end of the phone call I was pleased that she agreed to offer us our deposit back (less the $125 for the photo shoot), told her that we appreciated it. Later that evening, I got an email stating she would not be returning our deposit after all. She then emailed me back attacking me personally and taking words I had said and twisting them around.

Needless to say, we would not recommend her to anyone due to her lack of professionalism. We were able to find a different photographer that treated us very well and was about the same price.