Best of 2023

I Want a Refund on This Wedding Photography Package Because All You Did Was Focus on Cats

You call yourself a photographer? I want a refund! You snapped six hundred and thirty photos at my wedding, but only ten of them are photos we’d actually want. The rest are of random cats behaving badly.

We held the reception in a back alley across from the beach that we picked because we thought it would make for some good photo ops. But here in this pre-ceremony photo with my family, half of us are cut off. Instead, there’s an American Shorthair in the center about to catch a mouse. And in this other one, it’s just our floating heads at the bottom. You seemed to have aimed the camera up, capturing a Burmese balancing on a ledge with his middle finger aimed right at us.

You need to waive the payment, or I’m going to tell everyone how awful you are. I mean, just look at this cat with his head between its legs, licking his own tail. Why would you think that is something I wanted to have as part of my wedding album? I have seven nieces and only one of them’s in a photo. But even in that one, her face is hidden behind a manx wearing a large felt hat like Meghan Markle. Couldn’t you have moved her? Also, couldn’t you have focused on my bridesmaids in their fabulous dresses and not kittens in ill-fitting cummerbunds?

I mean, where’s my friend Emma giving a toast? I can see her arm raising a champagne flute, but she’s so washed out from overexposure. The only thing that’s clear is a Himalayan wrapped around her neck like a scarf. Then there are the completely dark ones, where you forgot to remove the lens cover, but somehow I can make out the glowing eyes of a Cheshire. You think I should be paying for photos like these?



Where are all the snapshots we took near the ocean? I swear I remember one where a wave almost engulfed us and I screamed “OMG WILL THE ALGAE STAIN MY GOWN?” The photos you posted to the online viewing gallery are of cats on surfboards. And what’s up with the male tabby smoking a pipe? How does that even work — balancing on his two hind legs on a wave?

Half the photos are blurry, like this one where you failed to capture an awesome photo of me looking at my veiled reflection in a mirror, the few moments before I became a Mrs. But the Abyssinian pounding through a tuna steak in my dressing room is in a focus so detailed, I can even see rhinestone nail art on her claws as she holds the fork.

Not only do I want a refund, I’m going to sue. I hired you for four hours, but half the time, I saw you out of the corner of my eye trying to squeeze a cat into a tuba. And while you were over by the band, you totally missed me throwing the bouquet. But here, around photo #507, there’s that American Shorthair and the mouse, midair, strapped to a makeshift rocket.

Even the ones on my own iPhone are messed up. Remember when I handed it to you to take a picture of me with my grandpa? Yeah, you got the photo–of our feet–where a tiger is tying pops’ shoelace. You have one hour to refund me or I’m going apeshit on your social media. Because I paid for you to take photos of my wedding, but all you did was focus on cats.

And here in #630, one very dead mouse.