Peculiar Milestones

This weekend April and I received our first hate letter. It was from someone who is out of his/her mind with anger that we're not charging more for our wedding photography services. Apparently, it's not acceptable that we're only charging enough to cover our basic costs, even though we've only done one wedding so far and are just trying to build our portfolio. In fact, that we are doing so is threatening to bring down the entire wedding photography industry! We've only been in business two months and we're already destroying the livelihood of thousands of photographers across the land! I, for one, am deeply impressed that we've managed to amass such power in such little time. Hooray for us!

In the hours after receiving the letter, I composed a rather brilliant, biting reply in my head that I intended to post here (since the author of the letter politely declined to include his/her name, and didn't even disclose his/her gender, leading A & I to spend several amusing hours trying to figure out whether we should be laughing at a man or a woman, which for some reason seemed relevant), but have since decided that while I won't pretend I'm never willing to stoop to low levels, this is not worth it. This person doesn't know what they're talking about. It's kind of that simple. OF COURSE we would like to charge more money. OF COURSE we'd like to draw in the caliber of clients who are willing to pay several thousand dollars for their wedding images. And we hope to get there in the next year or so. But right now, we can't justify asking people to pay us huge amounts of money when we're still just infants in this industry. I don't think we should have to make apologies for that, and I'm not going to. Bring on the hate letters, darlings!

The thing that gets me, though, is that there are SO many people/issues that deserve to be protested. I could list hundreds off the top of my head. It's strange to me that someone would waste her time (time she obviously has because no one is hiring her to shoot their wedding) writing a nasty letter to two nice girls (can't you tell how nice we are by looking at our site?!) who are just trying to start up a little business. We're utterly harmless. But oh, the venom this person spat.

Happily, we are looking at this as nothing more than something fun to add to our scrap book, a little milestone that makes us feel a bit more like a real business.

P.S. To the person who wrote the letter, you might want to direct your next one at the teachers who were supposed to have taught you grammar. I recommend starting with early elementary and working your way up.