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| - We had our wedding ceremony at Graceland Wedding Chapel. Our experience with the chapel for the ceremony and their photo department are different. The chapel people made one mistake related to our photos. Dealing with the photos after the ceremony has taken a lot of time and effort.
We booked 30 minutes in the chapel because of reviews I read about being rushed. You usually receive 15 minutes. We paid $150 for the additional 15 to give us 30 minutes total. We purchased a package that had a minister perform a civil ceremony followed by Elvis appearing after we said I do.
I am going to address our five issues with the photos, then get some positives about the ceremony.
(1) I had emailed a list to the chapel of who I wanted photographed in the chapel. The chapel confirmed my list by email. We did not receive what was confirmed. The chapel did not give the list to the photographer. We only received a group shot, quick, shots of us with our parents, and shots of just us (bride and groom).
(2) If you want to purchase digital images of your photos, the chapel charges $15.00 per image. Enough said.
(3) If you want any editing done to the digital photo images, the cost is $15.00 for the first photo and $5.00 for each additional photo, in addition to the digital image charge. Enough said.
(4) We ordered wallet sized photos. The photos do not arrive pre-cut. They have no borders to allow for space to cut either. I bought an exacto knife and a rule to do as well as possible.
(5) The chapel sends the photos at 72 dpi. At least 250 is recommended for good quality and professional prints. When we use the images, the print quality has not been great. We contacted the chapel's photo department for the photos in at least 250 dpi. I had a lot of back and forth and time put in with the chapel's photo department about this. Then we only received 15 of the 61 images at 250 dpi. The rest we have are still 72 dpi. Come on. We paid a fortune and these are our wedding photos!
What are you going to do as to the photo pricing? The photos the chapel posts on their website are stamped and protected from copying. Either pay the chapel for photos of your wedding ceremony or have none. No one is permitted to take photos in the chapel except the chapel photographer. We could not afford to order all photos taken at our ceremony. A wedding is once in a lifetime, so imagine how sad, irritated and disappointed I am as a bride.
The chapel will send its limo (capacity 6 people) as a part of your package to transport you to the chapel and back. We needed it to take us back to our hotel one half hour after the ceremony finished (we took photos outside the chapel after the ceremony). We were not permitted to use the limo on the return because it needed to be free for other ceremonies. On the day of the wedding, our limo driver was surprised and indicated we could have had his service for the return. We (bride and groom) ended up taking our guest's bus (Bell Trans 24 passenger) from the chapel back to our hotel for the reception.
The chapel can arrange for the groom not to see the bride until she is walking the aisle. They did a good job with this.
If you have a train on your dress, tell them you want to start your aisle march in the reception area. They were going to have me start half way down the aisle so they could shut the doors at the start (so their photos and video would not show the lobby or any persons in the lobby). I didn't care - I wanted to walk fully down the aisle with my father (not half the aisle for about 3 seconds) and have my train follow properly. The chapel had no issue with that.
I considered having my matron of honor - our only wedding party - walk the aisle before my dad and I, but the chapel said no unless we wanted her to walk to the wedding march (the only music they have for the ceremony) or we brought our own music.
Our minister was nice, I think -saw him for about three seconds before the ceremony - and the ceremony wording was fine enough. He had an accent that made it a bit difficult to understand him at times. Elvis' performance after we said "I do" was fantastic. Do it! We kept it a secret from our guests and had a blast. He sang a part of three Elvis songs, not the entire song, and then also performed his own ceremony for us with some great "vows."
We paid for the webcast of our ceremony. It is worth doing. Friends and family who were not at the ceremony were able to watch. It meant a lot to us and them to share this special occasion this way.
Overall, I was pleased with the ceremony part, but not so pleased with the photography experience.
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