Wedding Photographer Reviews – Why Hire the Nicole Chan team?
TLDR: Here’s the bottom line
I am friendly, type A, experienced, capable, confident, responsive, creative, and an excellent listener.
I am a real human that cares about you and the photographs that you want.
You will benefit from my Type A insanity
I’m the eldest daughter (Like Oprah, Beyonce, and Sheryl Sandberg) and what they say about them is true for me – outgoing, ambitious, highly focused, and perhaps a little stubborn.
During the pre-planning process, I’ll guide you through a timeline planning session and create a day sheet (complete with a family portrait checklist) that would make the nerdiest excel experts proud.
We’ll review family members and friends that are important to you, so that my team can understand your relationships and create meaningful photographs that depict those relationships.
Photo and video under one happy roof
Like the best sports teams, orchestras, and theater groups, practice makes perfect.
Our photo and video teams work seamlessly together because not only have we worked together for nearly every weekend for the last 9 years, we also go on Vermont ski trips, New Zealand road trips, and sushi outings together.
We’re friends, who happen to have a seamless working relationship. If you dig into the photographer vs videographer feud, it goes back centuries. Okay, maybe not that far, but ask anyone, it can be a big point of friction!
Posing guidance and direction like you’ve never experienced before
99% of my clients are not Instagram models. Many of my couples say that having their photo taken gives them low-grade anxiety.
I will give you lots of direction and posing guidance you so that your portraits look natural. I promise you will not have stuff, uncomfortable, and awkward photos. Pinky promise.
I can create great photos in a [blizzard/dark black hole/torrential downpour]
Sure, if I could photograph in perfect golden hour sun all day, I would.
But I don’t.
I live in Boston, where we have old buildings with crappy tungsten lightbulbs that flicker, snowstorms in May, and unpredictable year round rain.
I have extensive knowledge on making artificial light look natural. Dark museums? Mixed lighting churches? Gigantic ballrooms with old-as-dirt lightbulbs? I’ve got this under control.
I love lighting challenges. I love them so much that a revolutionary lighting company called MagMod sponsors me, and I travel all over the country speaking about my lighting strategies.
Graceful problem solving under pressure
Being a wedding photographer means that I have to give up some control. Ie: weather, location, timing, unexpected situations.
This career is high pressure, fast paced, and unforgiving. I only get one chance, one moment, and one day to create a set of photographs that you’ll cherish forever.
I know that if you get a stain on your dress, that we should use different materials to remove the stain based on the dress fabric.
I have access to indoor locations for so that our Plan B rain plans are still as beautiful as our Plan A ones.
I’ll step up up and help. I’m not a fly on the wall. I’m dedicated to making your wedding day as stress free as possible.
Sometimes, all the planning in the world won’t help. This is where the experience comes into play.
Expert in in big crazy families, languages, and multicultural events
I know what it’s like to have different sides of the family speak different languages. I know how it feels to have special traditions in yoru family, and how badly you want to make sure that it’s captured properly.
Blended family? Let’s make sure everyone feels wanted, loved, and respected. Conflict? I am an expert at family drama and helping keep the peace for one special wedding day.
Big families? I’ve got you. Big catholic family with a dozen siblings? Giant Chinese family with the uncle with the nice camera and a mom who is overly concerned about the food? A zillion Aunties and Uncles for your Indian wedding? Jewish grandma that’s guilt tripping you for designing the perfect Ketubah?
It’s nothing I haven’t seen before (a dozen times each). Let’s talk. I can help.
Top notch customer service
I like to think that we are kind humans first, and wildly hardworking photographers second.
I know you are excited to see your photographs. That’s why we promise a 3 week turnaround (and often times, faster)
I know your parents might be bugging you with photo requests. This is why we offer to speak with your parents prior to your wedding so that we can understand what is important to them. This way, we can understand what they want and create photos that your whole family will appreciate.
I know it’s most likely your first time getting married, so I’m here to help with finding trusted vendors to match your vision and create a stress free timeline with you.
My team supports me, and in turn, I can support you. We’re a well-oiled team of photographers, videographers, editors, and studio managers.
Only the best heirlooms for you (and your parents)
We hear you: You’re too busy to design your own album. You don’t know where the tools are to make sure that your wall art is perfectly level.
We use software with cool augmented reality to show you exactly what size (or frame color, mat size, canvas texture, etc) would look best in your home. We design album spreads using this software too!
Then, we deliver it, and even hire a professional installer to hang it on your wall for you.
Yes, we are also happy to design albums and artwork for your parents.
You deserve my 110% and I promise to give it to you.
Full transparency: there are some days where I feel overwhelmed. It’s usually when we have to edit tens of thousands of photos, and not enough hours of the day.
Then, Karen snaps me back to reality.
It’s not we HAVE to edit these photos, it’s we GET TO edit all these photos – for families that have put their trust in us. She reminds me to be grateful of the life we GET TO live.
I feel thankful for being able to do what I love as a career. I’ve worked extremely hard to get where I am, and will continue to work extremely hard, every day, for every single one of my clients.
Even though I have photographed over 500 weddings, I still wake up excited and looking forward to every wedding. I love what I do, and I’ll never get bored of this.
I take my job extremely seriously, because my clients trust me to create family heirlooms for them. I am the one that they chose to document their wedding day. I consider this a huge honor.
Christine and Reggie
If you want someone that will work harder than anyone else at your wedding, contact her. She is the best around period.
At a traditional Chinese wedding of 250+ people, from beginning to end, Nicole always had a smile on her face as she worked through ceremonies, formals, candids, and large family pictures. She captured and kept up with all of the energy we had, and had the greatest attitude all day and night.
Belinda and Alvin
The Villa – East Bridgewater, MA
What drew us to Nicole was that her work has life; it captures the emotion of the day, which felt so much more compelling and powerful to us.
In addition to being super warm, friendly, awesome people, Nicole and Karen were also extremely organized and exceedingly patient as we asked a million questions.
It was extremely clear that they had done this many times before
Every interaction felt like we were connecting with friends, not just “vendors”, who truly cared about doing everything possible to ensure that we were completely comfortable and had as much ironed out as possible prior to the wedding.
If photography and/or videography is important to you, look no further than Nicole.
Crystal and Jeff
You understood us and the importance of warmth and laughter. You GOT us. There was no explaining, etc. It was just that easy.
Your energy is infectious.
I love that you dove into our wedding, with all its humor and nerdiness. You’ve been so responsive, creative, and fun to work with. I’ve gotten so many compliments regarding my wedding pictures! I love your ability to capture all the happiness and joy of your subjects.
Audrey and Tara
Nicole and Karen are honestly heaven sent. Their professionalism and talent of are unparalleled.
On the day of, the team showed up on time, planned the perfect first look with some epic shots of the Boston skyline, got some awesome candids of us and all our guests, didn’t miss a single guest (we sent photos to all our guests afterwards and were able to find at least one shot of everyone), entertained children so they would be looking vaguely in the direction of the camera, navigate parental stress with grace, and even kept mum about a secret dance that one of us had planned for the other until it happened! The list could go on and on.
Leading up to the wedding, Nicole and Karen both kept us organized, sending us helpful tips (seriously read her wedding planning tips — it’s like a free how-to guide) and reminding us of important deadlines for things even only tangentially to photography.
Chelsea and Jeff
We were looking for a photojournalistic style, and Nicole Chan was the PERFECT fit.
My husband and I fell in love with Nicole Chan from the moment we met! She completely won us over with their fun and friendly personalities and incredible eye for capturing the joy and meaning of a wedding day (which is evident by looking at all the gorgeous photos on their blog and website). Our wedding photos are BEYOND stunning.
