John Fountain photographed our wedding and had a deeply negative impact on the night for ourselves and many of our guests. We are writing this review to warn other couples about hi...s lack of professionalism and reported untoward behavior with female guests.
First, early in the night, he entered the bridal suite (where the bride and bridesmaids were getting dressed, putting on makeup, etc.) to take pictures of the bridal party. Ourselves and others heard him making the comment, “Look at all this game for me to hunt.” We laughed it off but should have taken this comment more seriously. Later in the night, several guests reported that, during the reception, he was seen repeatedly holding his camera down by women’s legs on the dance floor to take pictures. Upon noticing this, we were informed that a guest confronted him and asked what he was doing in which he reportedly replied, “Women shouldn’t wear dresses if they don’t want their legs photographed.” We were also told that he made several women feel uncomfortable. Examples include being too physically close on the dance floor, making comments that made women feel like they were being hit on, asking an employee to take her name tag off for a photo (not sure why he was taking photos of catering staff), and pulling specific bridesmaids aside for specific photos. He took very few photos of our maid of honor but took many photos of one specific bridesmaid. His actions, behavior, and comments left this bridesmaid in tears.
Following, our wedding coordinator confronted Mr. Fountain about the above information. Immediately afterwards, he pulled us (the bride and groom) aside and asked for the remainder of his payment by check (yes, in the middle of our wedding) even though we had already discussed payment arrangements. When we were alerted to his behavior, we directly asked him to leave the wedding, at around 9pm.
In addition to Mr. Fountain’s behavior with our female guests, he also conducted himself unprofessionally throughout the wedding. Examples include: a) Several staff members informed us that he appeared to be serving himself drinks during the event, which raised concerns for us; b) during the pre-wedding photos, he repeatedly stopped to show off the photos he took (instead of simply moving on to the next photo). This required us (the bride and groom) to keep him on track, so we were on time for the ceremony; c) and finally, his style of posing was very intense and made taking photos generally unpleasant.
In hiring Mr. Fountain, we relied on the many glowing reviews we found on Google, The Knot, Yelp, and Wedding Wire. Thus, we were shocked by his behavior. As stated earlier, his actions significantly negatively affected our wedding night, our guests’ experiences, and our memories of what was otherwise a wonderful evening. We cannot recommend not hiring Mr. Fountain strongly enough to future couples considering his services.