Home A Tale of two sisters

Congratulations on your engagement! I know that this will be a very busy, but exciting year for you. Just remember to breathe! I happily recommend Nancy to any bride-to-be. I have a unique perspective on her work because my older sister got married the summer before I did and had a terrible photographer. Let me first tell you about my sister's experience and then ours. I'll let you make the comparison. My sister chose a different photographer after viewing some photos at their booth at the Seattle Wedding Show. She liked the photographs and thought that the photographer present at the convention center was very professional and knew a lot about her wedding location (St. Michelle Winery in Woodinville). However, on the day of the wedding, a photographer that she had never met before showed up to do their photos. This photographer had never been to the winery and failed to choose many of the naturally beautiful settings located on the winery grounds for photographs. When my sister got her photos back from the photographer, she was very disappointed. They were all terrible! The black and whites were so dark that everybody blended into the backgrounds. The reception photos looked like they were taken from somebody lying on the ground so that you had many shots of the bottoms of people's chins! It only took them a day to decide which photos to order because there were only 2 or 3 good ones out of 100 or so! When they did order their photos, the prints that they received were badly done. The photographer had cropped people out of the group shots, cut the feet off of couple shots, and even cut halves of heads! To make it worse, their photographer was less than gracious about redoing the prints! All in all, it was a terrible experience for them. Now for my experience with Nancy Treder. I met Nancy at the Wedding Show in Seattle. I loved her creative photography style. My husband and I got married near the University of Washington campus and chose to get all our photos done there, so we wanted a photographer familiar with the area. Nancy was very knowledgeable about the campus and gave us several ideas of locations where she had photographed before. I decided to look around at other photographers and do some careful comparisons before making a decision, but I did make an appointment with Nancy at her studio for the following week. When I visited Nancy, she had many of the UW campus shots that she had done before already sitting out for me to view. On top of that, she had gone down to the UW and scouted out some new locations to consider. I was very impressed by this professionalism and careful planning. We hired her and it was one of the best decisions that we made for our wedding. As the day of the wedding drew near, Nancy went on several new scouting trips down to our church, the reception site, and the UW campus to plan out shots and lighting. My husband and I had chose so many locations on the campus for various photos that I was worried about fitting them all in. Nancy offered to show up 1/2 hour before our allotted time for free to make sure that we got all the shots that we wanted to! True to her word, on the day of the wedding, she was already on campus and set up by the time that the wedding party arrived. She had brought with her two assistants and was all set to begin shooting. We flew through many shots and she kept everybody organized (and we had a LARGE wedding party of 7 groomsmen, 7 bridesmaids, 3 flower girls, 2 candlelighters, and a ringbearer)! We got through all our shots and more! She had added several locations that were all just perfect. Nancy had so much energy and even ran several times to catch just the shot that she wanted! She absolutely loved my parents and they loved her! Once, she sprinted ahead of my parents and I, so that she could take a photo of us walking towards her and my dad laughed and commented, "Where in the world did you find this photographer?". We finished with time to spare! The rest of our wedding went by in a blur and while I know Nancy was there, I never saw her again. She and her two assistants totally blended in with the crowd. When my husband and I got back from our honeymoon, our photos were already done and waiting for us. They were all wonderful! The best surprise was that Nancy had taken many photos that we never knew about! I would say that only 25% of the photos were of the poses that we were aware of and 75% of the photos were candids of amazing quality. She was able to capture moments that we would have completely forgotten about. It took us months to order our photos because we could not narrow down the choices! As is, we order LOTS of photos....enough to fill two homes and still we are wishing that we had ordered more! I get nothing in return for recommending Nancy, but I have gladly put her name out there to any new bride that I meet. You would not be disappointed with this choice in photographers. You are more than welcome to view some of our photos online at www.ultravioletstudios.com Just click on the picture of my dad talking on the cell phone and it will wisk you away to our site. The photos that you see online are just a small portion of the many that were taken. I hope that this helps you with your photography decisions. Good luck! Sincerely, Melissa Swenson

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