I read an interesting, yet somewhat disturbing article, on Brides.com. Now it is an older article but I cannot honestly think that things have gotten much better. The article talks about wedding scams and businesses that go out of business after a brides book them. The following paragraph cites Better Business Bureau stats that show that of all wedding industry businesses, complaints against photographers were the highest.

“While no government agency specifically tracks wedding-industry scams, Sheila Adkins, director of public affairs at the Council of Better Business Bureaus in Washington, D.C., says that wedding-dress shops accounted for 1,016 of the 758,923 complaints filed nationwide in 2005. Of the other wedding-related industries the BBB tracks, photographers had the most strikes against them (1,301 complaints) and were followed closely by florists and limousine companies. Of course, this only reflects the people who were motivated enough to file complaints. After interviewing more than 1,000 couples and analyzing BBB statistics, Alan and Denise Fields, authors of Bridal Bargains: Secrets to Throwing a Fantastic Wedding on a Realistic Budget, estimate that as much as 10 percent of wedding costs is eaten by industry fraud. And yet, “most vendors are genuine businesspeople who want to build up their companies legitimately,” says Robbi Ernst III, founder and president of June Wedding, Inc., in San Francisco, an association for event professionals.”

Now I know there are some disreputable professional photographers out there but there are also a lot of non-professional photographers that are giving our industry a bad name by calling themselves professionals and not conducting themselves in that manner. As I tell all brides, do your research, get referrals and look beyond price. As for we professionals, we owe it to ourselves and our industry to conduct ourselves in a proper manner and politely point out those who do not. We also need our photo industry associations and wedding industry publications and associations to stress the need for working with a solid professional and not settle for less.