Complaint Review: Lauren Kingree Photography - Haines City Florida

We hired Lauren Kingree Photography and signed a contract for services on January 17, 2015 for our October 24, 2015 wedding. Lauren was extremely professional and responded relatively quickly (within days) via text, phone and email. We even interviewed her via FaceTime, as we were getting married in CT and living in IL. She was moving from FL to CT, which is why we chose her based on her photography style and location.

We paid her $500 as a cash deposit and the remaining $1900 ($1500 per the original contract and an additional $400 for her to stay an additional 2 hours during the wedding reception) via credit card, two weeks prior to the wedding.

Lauren showed up to our wedding, on time, with a second photographer, as promised. She even stayed longer than the additional time we paid for. After the wedding, I kindly asked for some photographs to use for our thank you cards to send to our wedding guests. Lauren was not as responsive as before the wedding, taking several weeks to respond (only via text or email), but she uploaded 10 photos to our personal website that we were able to use.

Our contract states "Proofs will be ready 8-12 weeks after the client's wedding," for the following items:

- Complete wedding day photographic coverage for up to eight hours

- Two photographers

- 500 high resolution images on a custom USB drive

- All images posted in a personalized online gallery for ten years

- Copyright Print Release

Communication with Lauren significantly dropped off after January 2016. Our texts, voicemails and emails went unanswered for sometimes a month or more. We never received one call from her since before our wedding. She has only communicated through email or text.

On May 8, 2016, after pleading to receive some photographs for Mother's Day, she uploaded an additional 28 photos, most of them being duplicates of each other. We continued communication attempts with no luck. The last time we heard from her (via email) was on July 2, 2016, after we demanded she deliver our photos on July 2. As of July 3, 2016, she uploaded an additional 27 photos, mostly of my wedding dress. From that date, we have not heard from her since and are missing 425+ photographs from our wedding.

After July, we hired a private investigator to find her current address and a lawyer to issue her a demand letter. We not only sent it to her, but sent it to her mother and father, as well, in the event something happened to her. Further communication with her mother identified that she was back in Florida. Her posts on social media (Instagram and Facebook) also proved she was active.

We understand we can probably get our money back, but clearly, we trusted Lauren for a very important moment in our life, only to receive a fraction of what we hired for her. We have communicated to her multiple times that we only want the photos, regardless of them being touched up or not and for her to fulfull her contract. The sheer lack of communication and unprofessionalism in this manner is astounding and she should never be able to work in photography, whether primary or a second shooter ever again.

It has been over a year since she shot our wedding and we have only a glimpse of what was supposed to be the most important contract of our event. It can't be that difficult to upload photos that have already been taken.