Michelle VanTine Photography

I unfortunately have a lot to say about my experience, so I’ll start with customer service. At first she will be very responsive, but as time goes on and your wedding gets closer, it will be much harder to get a response from her. She might set up a phone date to call you, but inevitably she will forget to call you or just plain call whenever it’s convenient for her. She might call you from the car on the way to a shoot, but then she will forget everything you talked about because she couldn’t write anything down. She will regularly lose e-​mails from you and your planner. If she promised you a particular second shooter, don’t expect to actually see them. She’ll bring whoever she wants.
When you get the contract, it will probably have typos on it. Important things, like the agreed upon price, will be wrong. The address where to send your payment will be listed incorrectly in at least one place. Also, she doesn’t live in the DC area anymore — be aware. As far as the terms go, they are standard, but note that when she states photos will be ready in 8 – 10 weeks, she really means MUCH longer than that. Really we’re talking more like 15 WEEKS — and that’s only if you e-​mail her and request your photos. Apparently it’s ok for her to deliver the photos and album over 5 weeks late with no excuses, requests for patience, or contact whatsoever. No «I’m working hard to get it done.» I actually started to wonder if I was ever going to see my photos.
When you finally get your photos, your reaction will be one of frustration. There will be photos that are out of focus and clearly not usable for anything and you will be missing photos. Photos that you specifically requested will be missing because she forgot to bring the shot list that you spent an hour making with her to the wedding. You’ll also get a beautiful album in the mail. It’s got a nice cover and spine. If you’re lucky, all the photos she chooses to put in the album will be photos that you like. But you get NO say in the photos that make it in the album. In my case, because she was running over 5 weeks behind, the album was thrown together with so little attention to detail that there is a giant photo of the wedding party with 2 peoples eyes closed. How she didn’t notice this is beyond me. Any good photographer would do one of two things — either choose another shot (obviously! there are like 7!) or use photoshop to fix the blinking problem. But Michelle won’t do that. She will say that she was «capturing a moment» (in a posed photo!?) and that she can’t help when people blink. Ummm… Michelle has won photography awards because she can get one or two great shots. Hopefully you will get those. But you will also get a huge number of very mediocre shots.
Hiring Michelle was the only vendor mistake that I made for my wedding. She was a huge disappointment and refused to make things right at the end. After being over 5 weeks late, and delivering an album with glaring errors, she said there was nothing that she could do. She flat out refused to reprint and fix my album and leave me with even one positive customer service experience. She told me that she ordered a special custom wood box to deliver my flash drive of photos as a special show of appreciation for my patience (which she never asked for). Well, that’s a blatant lie. She does that for all her clients — enjoy your tiny wooden box.
Find a photographer that will work with you. You have MANY other great options.