criley's reviews

As per the postcard insert with my albums, I wanted to share my experience with Bella Pictures.

At first my experience seemed positive. Our photographer was chosen for us, and we agreed to use the first one they found. The day of the wedding they were there on time, snapping away photos, but we never got the classic, just married photograph that my mother still gripes at me to have. I did enjoy our photos, but here are my complaints.

1) They basically handed us 2,000 photos to sort through to find 100 of our favorites. Some of the ones they chose for "our story" were some of the worst photographs taken! After spending nearly 4+ hours of sorting through photos, writing down numbers to send to them, on a form that was ambiguous at best, my email to them was lost, and I was forced to do the process again.

2) After finally getting to them our requests, we waited 6-10 weeks for a draft. I wanted maybe 3 things changed on the draft, but to make the changes, it took them another 6-10 weeks. I even had to email them 6 or seven times to make sure they even got it. Needless to say, communication with them is terrible.

3) After finally getting a third draft - and many weeks later - I threw my hands up and decided to go with what we had. I sent them the approval notice in January for our final draft. It is now July, and I just today got my albums.

I never thought I would see my first wedding anniversary and still not have my wedding albums.

Bella not only contracts out photographers, but they also contract out a printer - who takes 6 months to print 3 albums (all of which are identitical!).

You deal with so many different people: two photographers, a coordinator, a designer, and in my case managers because the process was so tedious.

4) When I got my albums, I realized there was a mistake - a lazy mistake really - when I asked for one photo to be replaced by two on the album, instead of deleting the one photo, they simply placed the two over it, so when it went to the printer and was blown up, you can see in the sliver between the two photos the old one. I am so fed up with this company, I"m not going to bother to try to get another print because frankly, it would take another 6-8 months I'm sure.

In sum, they are not worth the money, difficult to deal with, TEDIOUS in their handling and response to your requests, and all in all a bad company.

Save yourself the hassle, go with someone local, and DO NOT USE BELLA PICTURES