Life's Big Events - Melissa Manseau Scarborough, ME

Let me begin by saying that I am also an artist and know what a good picture looks like. Life's Big Events did a splendid job with every wedding I witnessed them capture. Melissa and Lindsay Manseau are great. They take their business very seriously and work very well together. Their candid-style of photography is a thing of beauty. They work hard to not be in anybodys way during any part of a wedding, its almost like they are not even there. They offer packages that are affordable and they are willing to travel all over Maine to work, can you get any better than that?

Like professionals they take thousands of photographs and sort them out to give their brides an incredible selection for their albums. I have seen brides faces light up when they see what Life's Big Events shows them, they make dreams come true.

I felt that my personal experience with the both Melissa and Lindsay was absolutely unbelievable. I feel that some people are just too overly picky and need to be more go with the flow. Both woman now what a girl wants and made dreams come true for not only me, but other brides too. There prices are supremely reasonable for people on a budget and knowing how some bridezillas out there who will send pictures back if even their shoe is half way out of the picture, I think if the true emotions and feelings of that day is reflected in those picture, then it was worth every penny and for me it was. CHEERS GIRLS CHEERS!

PS: any negative review should be taken with a grain of salt and some people are just too overly harsh! I think that Lindsay and Melissa are amazing people as well as photographers.

Let me begin by saying that I am an artist and know what a good picture looks like. Let me also say that my wedding was absolutely magical and beautiful....everything we expected-complete perfection.....except for the photography! The pictures and the photographers, Melissa Manseau and her daughter Lindsay will forever leave me with a pit in my stomach when I recall the emotions they generated through their work. It was a horribly miserable experience and the moments of my wedding are now lost forever. My husband and I sat with them prior to the wedding on several occasions and explained IN DETAIL exactly what we wanted and how vitally important our pictures were...the most important aspect besides the production of the ceremony. Both my husband and I come from very large families and it was the only time my family would be all together in a formal fashion such as this (my parents are deceased and my brother walked me down the aisle. He has never and never will again, where a tux so this was very special!) We had a lot of people in the wedding, including 8 children who were amazing and it was extremely important to have the "moments" captured with them and our families. I gave Melissa a detailed list of all the portrait shots we wanted and other very specific instructions, including full disclosure to go wherever and do whatever she needed to to get the shots. There was no way she could have misunderstood our expectations.

During the portraits, she was meek and timid and expected me to pull people together for the shots.....I told her prior to the day that she would need to yell for people and be aggressive in putting everyone together....she wasted tons of time asking me what she should do. She was the photographer and should have been able to take charge like she assured us she could. Because of this wasted time, she could not get the wedding party's pictures where we wanted them and thus the background is sub par. The formal portraits of my family were a disgrace because again she could not take command of the situation, ask people to look at the camera (all basic photog's responsibilities!) or take enough pictures to get a single decent shot. I knew as soon as she began shooting that when those pictures came in I would be devastated. She performed as if she had never held a camera before. Devastated is an understatement!

When we got the pictures online, they were a complete disaster! Not a single person who viewed them had a good thing to say. They were worse than we had anticipated. The website we viewed them on had been 'edited' for quality by her daughter Lindsay....we could not believe what we were seeing was the best they could do, but it was. There were only a couple of formal shots of my family, all of which were terrible, not everyone looking at the camera (and there were only 7-10 people in a picture at once so it was not difficult to do!), people were not centered, faces were really dark....just disgusting! Yet, there were over 15 shots of the flowers and over 10 shots of the damn cake!!! It was clear that much time was wasted on incidentals! The rest of the pictures were very dark and because of this it was difficult to see facial expressions. Every picture was taken, it seemed, without using a zoom since we appeared to be 500 feet away from the camera...again difficult to see details, faces, etc. The subjects were not centered and were cut off at wierd places, like ankles, heads, arms. The excuse given for the shadows on our faces during the ceremony (sunny, outdoors) was that it's impossible to do anything about it.....we found out later after other professional photog's and printers looked at them, that all that was need was lots of flash and lights which she did not use. This is also the reason for why the pics were so dark and the coloration so poor. There was not a single picture straight on of my husband and me during the ceremony...her excuse was that she didn't want to stand in front of anyone. Remember, I told her she could go and do whatever she needed to get the proper shots! There was also not a single portrait shot of my husband and me that wasn't dark, from a mile away, shadowed, or with both of us looking in opposite directions. We rented a fun themed bus to transport the parties....there are no pics of us getting on or off it and no pics that are usable during our trip to the ceremony site (we had a photog on the damn bus with each party for the whole trip and nothing to show for it!)

After many tears and confirmations from others as to the terrible quality, we sat down with her to explain our discontent. She sent a letter with cheap excuses and her regrets. (Her regrets? Now that's funny!) She offered for us to look at all of the pictures on her computer since there were 2700 pics in total. They were no better but she did agree to re-edit the pics and we went through each one to try to find something redeemable for me to rework on my own computer. But there were still no pics of my family or the other moments we wanted. She sent us the dvds....another disgrace. She screwed up again and gave us a duplicate on the second dvd instead of giving us the remaining pics that didn't fit on the first. Eventually she sent us a new dvd but again over 400 of those pictures were duplicates from the first dvd! Just poor poor attention payed! The editing that she agreed to do was also not complete and she missed the photoshop work on many of the pics that we asked her to fix, thus leaving them for me to try to redo on my less than professional home equipment. Upon viewing them again in the luxury of my home versus her studio, we realized it was so much worse.....her work was just abominable and so amateur. I worked for over 25 hours on the pictures to crop, zoom, add tons of light and re-color the pictures to try to get something presentable. We took them to a professional printer who was also disgusted by her work....they worked on the pictures again on their equipment to try for a better product but had to apologize profusely for what we were getting. In the end, the pictures are better. But it took great efforts by me and other professionals to re-work her hideous work and even still, the pictures are not good. We asked her for some kind of a refund for our trouble. Her response was to give us $500 back and to NOT give us the album we paid for....THAT is NOT a refund!!! I was beyond furious that she had screwed up so may things over and over and then had the nerve to disguise a refund in a way that allowed her to do less work! I called her and told her we did not want the album (it would have been done with all of her unedited pictures so it would have been awful anyway....I knew we would never look at it and it would continue to be a source of anger for us. I also knew that I could put together an album with the professionally edited pics that we could at least not cry over.) I also demanded the $500 back along with our professional printer's cost. She finally agreed but never apologized...I think at that point she had to have realized how wrong she was to suggest her idea of a refund. It just wasn't fair that we were not getting a product that we were contracted for...at least she paid for our printing. And in the end, we can look back at the pics with more ease. But the amount of time, work, tears and money were not worth the finished product that we never should have had to do but that she should have. She should NEVER call herself a professional and her daughter is far too amateur to present herself as a photographer. Look at Linday's website...it's laughable. NEVER use them for any moments you want to capture and cherish!