Wedding planning can be a whirlwind of decisions, and choosing who the wedding photographer is going to be is often pushed to the back burner. For most brides, priorities lie with things the guests will see now, not see later. As it turns out though, your wedding photographer (or videographer) is actually one of the most important aspects of your wedding.
Think about it; as beautiful as that cake is, it’s good for the day and maybe frozen a bit longer. That dress? Gorgeous, no doubt, but the most amount of time people are going to be looking at it isn’t on your wedding day, but in years to come in photographs. The flowers and the venue is all for one day, but the pictures? They’re what you have for the rest of your life.
Now having said that, let’s get to it!
1.) Start looking early. Good photographers are often booked up years in advance, and even newly established photographers can be tough to nail down during the busy wedding months of summertime and early fall. So the second you get engaged (well, after you’ve done a respectable amount of celebrating), start looking around.
2.) Compare. In this case, it can be difficult to hire a photographer based strictly on experience. There are many photographers who have been shooting weddings for 20 years, but that doesn’t mean they have more creative vision than someone who’s been 
in the business 5 years and just “gets it”. Before you start looking at prices, browse websites for portfolio examples. If you like what you see, write down their rates and add them to a list to be narrowed down later. At this point, you’re just looking for a photographer you’re confident can produce beautiful pictures at your wedding.
3.) Experience. Now we get to experience, and not just as a professional photographer, but as a wedding photographer. Weddings provide an entirely different set of obstacles for a photographer than other settings. They must know how to get the picture without getting in the way, how to deal with the flash of guests taking their own pictures, and how to conduct themselves during a wedding. Because this is a “once in a lifetime” occurrence, there’s not time to miss the shot. An experienced wedding photographer knows where they have to be at all times to get the upcoming shot. Would you rather they learn the best places to stand at your wedding or at someone else’s?
4.) What does the cost include? Negatives may be tempting, but digital collection has been the most recent development, and a certain amount of editing may or may not be covered. In addition, make sure to ask if the cost covers the presence of a “second shoot,” or a second photographer who takes extra photographs at different angles. Sometimes this person is included in the cost, sometimes they are not. If they are, score! Having a ‘second shoot’ at your wedding decreases the chances of any perfect shots being missed.
5.) Where can you find feedback? If there is feedback on their website (which there probably is), you can bet it’s going to be the favorable kind. Check out other sources, like Yelp where you can research businesses and professionals to see what their clients really think of them. When all is said and done, you want to be sure your pictures are exactly what you were hoping for: a beautiful preservation of one of the best days of your life.