Internet, I need your advice. This has been bothering me for the last three weeks.
Here’s the background.
SSH (That’s Spaceship Husband, for those unfamiliar) and I went to his brother’s wedding a few weeks ago. It was, by all accounts, a positively lovely affair. SSH was one of the groomsmen, so we were there early for pictures. While we were waiting, I asked if my mother in law would take some pictures of us, because we were all dressed up, and because both our families like getting a picture in our holiday cards. She said “Oh, sure! Actually, why don’t I ask the photographer to do it after we take the family pictures?” To which I agreed, without thinking. We were doing big family pictures then anyway, she talked to the photographer, and he took 4 or 5 pictures of the two of us after we’d been standing up with the groom.
Here’s the problem.
My new sister in law is going to have a handful of pictures of US in her WEDDING PHOTOS.
I don’t know if this will bother her. It wouldn’t have bothered me (I liked all the pictures of other people in our wedding photos), but I can’t help but feel like I may have totally without thinking about it been kind of a jerk. I mean, if we wanted professional photos taken, we can afford to get them taken ourselves.
So now I’m not sure what to do. I haven’t seen a link to the pictures yet, so I don’t know if anyone has seen them. I can’t really call the photographer and ask him to delete them. But I don’t want to be like “Hi I’m a selfish jerk” either. Do I call her? Just let it go and not say anything? Am I making a mountain out of an anthill? I’d really like to avoid being a jerk to my new sister in law.
What should I do, if anything?
I wouldn’t worry about it! <3 It's only a few pictures out of what will undoubtedly be hundreds, and I'm sure your new sister-in-law won't even think about it. We had all kinds of weird pictures in our professional photos, and it's not like we were required to buy all of them; we just picked the ones we wanted. Twelve years later I don't remember any of the ones we didn't buy, and the only ones I remember being annoyed by are the ones that we thought were tacky but the photographer suggested we do anyway. 😛
I wouldn’t worry too much about it. I believe it’s pretty common for photographers to take pictures of relatives and friends and so on, so she shouldn’t be surprised to see you guys or anything. And as Anjela said, they aren’t required to buy all of them. 🙂
Our wedding photo set included lots of photos of people who weren’t us, and we were pleased by this. I can’t see why your new SIL would be offended in any way. It’s not as if you photobombed shots of the bride and groom with a llama.
I have no idea of this is the new normal or not, but at our wedding two years ago we were simply charged a flat fee for the photographers’ time, and received a DVD with the digital images. What to keep or print was entirely up to us.