She might actually be the "hidden gem" I was hoping to find...

I think we may have found our wedding photographer! I’m so excited about this. Her style is wonderful, artistic, quirky and emotional as opposed to very traditional and stiff. She's used to shooting weddings but at the same time she does plenty of other types of work, and in my mind that's actually a plus. She offers packages which completely correspond to what we had in mind (M wants to obtain and work on the pictures himself, and we’ll make our own album at some point. It may seem obvious but actually from the research I’ve done very few photogs were willing to hand you out a CD with the pictures, rather charging you $$$ for editing and processing them while keeping the originals). And her rates fall perfectly well within our budget, more comparable to what you can usually find here than in New York… A dream!

She lives in Albany, which is exactly at half-point between here and NYC, but she would be willing to drive down for a very reasonable fee. We’re planning to head to New York towards the end of next month, so we can do some Christmas shopping and start scouting restaurants for the reception, so we’re going to try to meet her on our way there and see confirm that it is a good fit for us! She seems so nice and I have such a good feeling…

Yay! Since it’s a small, very DIY wedding, we will not have to deal with that many vendors (no videographer, no DJ, no florist, no baker, etc.), so finding the right photographer at the right price is a big part of making it happen… If it works out (crossing fingers), we will then only have to find a restaurant (admittedly the biggest piece of the whole wedding puzzle) and an officiant, and that’s it! Everything else will rely on our own hands, and hopefully, on the helping ones of people around us.