My wife pointed me to an article in this month's Good Housekeeping magazine about lessons learnt. The reason she did is the article was about wedding photography. The article by Charlotte detailed that her and her husband didn't want a traditional wedding. "Why buy all the outfits you'll only wear once? Or pay for a reception for distant relatives and colleagues we would have felt obliged to invite?". They viewed it a waste of money. So they did it their way and had a fabulous holiday and once home went to the register office to get married. Three friends attended as witnesses.They wore jeans and the following day they went back to work.

Later they regretted the scrimping. "At the time we were pleased we had the day we wanted. We chose to document the day with a few cheap disposable cameras rather than spending money on a photographer. The few photos we had to remember our special day were fuzzy group shots with red eyes".

Seven years later her husband died of cancer and Charlotte has no wedding photos to show her daughter. She said "I wish that we had splashed out on an official photographer who could have captured our happiness on our special day. It would have been the best money we had ever spent".

Yes this is a sad and a very unfortunate situation and I feel for Charlotte and her family.

So why share this sad story? Well 2016 for me showed it is becoming more common to have a relative or friend with a decent camera take photographs at a wedding and a number of my opportunities for this year were lost to these relatives and friends. I understand of course this would represent a big saving on the cost of the wedding but having a set of professional images that tell the story of this special day are so precious and not employing a professional photographer may be a false economy.