Pixiq

Wedding photography is hard enough. Aside from just taking the photos, it is a lot of work to keep the bride and groom and their families happy. But, sometimes things can go terribly wrong, and on that score, this story takes the cake, the wedding cake so to speak.   

Todd J. Remis married Milena Grziboyska in 2003 and then, as so often happens, the marriage failed, ending in divorce in 2010. Despite that, Todd Remis is suing the studios of H & H Photographers, demanding that they pay him $48,000 so that he can recreate the entire wedding--including re-hiring the hall and flying all the participants to New York--where it will then be re-shot by another photographer. Remis's claim is based on his assertion, that back in 2003, the photographers did not take pictures of the last 15 minutes of the wedding, missing both the last dance and the toss of the bouquet. On top of the 48K, he also wants the studio to refund the $4,100 he paid for the photography.

Remis's target, H & H Photographers, is a beloved photo studio in the Bronx that has chronicled the weddings, bar mitzvahs and communions of thousands of Bronxites--including my family's--for over 65 years. Curt Fried, one of it's founders, escaped from Nazi-occupied Vienna in September 1939 and upon arriving in America was drafted into the Army, where he was learned photography. After the war, he opened the studio in the Bronx and Fried recalls that over the years he twice refused to hire the celebrated photographer Arthur Fellig, known as "Weegee," because he didn’t own a suit and was therefore unsuitable to photograph weddings.  (for more on Weegee see my PIXIQ post, Weegee the Famous)

In November 2003, Remis, an equity research analyst, and his fiancée, met with Fried and signed a contract to have photographs and videotape taken of their Dec. 28 wedding for a cost of $4,100. After the wedding, Remis went to the studio to get the proof shots and complained that the last 15 minutes of the affair was not photographed. The meeting went downhill from there and in a deposition Remis said that, “I remember being yelled at more than I have ever been yelled at before.” 

In the complaint, he noted that the photographs were “unacceptable as to color, lighting, poses, positioning” and that the video of the six hour wedding was only two hours long. Note for those of you who don't remember, standard videotape cassettes had just a two hours capacity. 

“I need to have the wedding recreated exactly as it was so that the remaining 15 percent of the wedding that was not shot can be shot,”says Remis. If anyone needs any more proof of why the world economy is in the toilet here it is, a "research analyst" who does the math and says that 15 minutes is 15% of six hours.Counting on my fingers I get that 15% of a six hour wedding is 54 minutes! 

Fried points out that in 2004, soon after the December 2003 party, Remis came to the studio and received 400 proof photos. Remis denies this and claims that “the office kept everything.” Yet, in 2004 a magazine published by Bowdoin College, Remis's alma mater, published a photograph from the couple's wedding in a feature on alumni weddings.

Remis testified that regardless of the wedding ending in divorce, he wants photos of its re-enactment because. “It was unfortunate in its circumstances, but we are very much happy with the wedding event and we would like to have it documented for eternity, for us and our families.” 

Which brings up another bizarre twist to this story, Milena, the ex-bride is believed to have moved back to Latvia. But her exact whereabouts are apparently unknown and even if found, there's no certainty that she and her familt would consent to participate in this charade.

Fried's son Dan, now runs the studio and says that the costs of defending against the lawsuit has already exceeded the amount Remis wants and that the whole thing is “an abuse of the legal system.” 

At this point, most of the grounds for the lawsuit were dismissed in the State Supreme Court in Manhattan, but the case will proceed to determine whether there was a breach of contract. It should be noted here too that Remis’s lawyer works for Goodwin Procter, a law firm where it just so happens Remis’s father is a litigation partner. 

Summing it all up Curt Fried says, “I had a good life, thank God, and at the end of my life this hits me in the face.”

Yeah, Curt, I agree its like being hit in the face with a very stale piece of frozen wedding cake thrown by the groom-zilla from hell.