Dreamlife Photos & Video
Reviews and Complaints

Extremely poor service, highly AVOID this group of photographers, they took my hard earned money without providing any type of satisfactory service but instead insult myself and my partner, all up they took $2760 from me without providing me any decent photo service and that was only for the pre-wedding shoot, luckily we cancelled before the wedding, as we also booked photo and video at the wedding which is now cancelled, thank god.

Their photographers are not professional, as they simply contract out their photographers from different service providers such as splendid photos. From the photos taken I would have done better with a disposable camera from 7 eleven. The photos were blurry, were not focused, were not of us, pictures of the bin on the side, the opera house pictures were blurry making the opera house unrecognisable, out of the 200 pictures they provided us, almost 100 of them were repeats of the same picture, other pictures I don't know why they would include in the final usb stick they gave us, it were of us fixing our own clothes and hair and other pictures we had our eyes closed because we blinked. We responded to them regarding our issues and Teresa proceeded to insult us that our eyes are small and we should use double eyelid stickers, we obviously were deeply offended by this and our eyes are big. They thought it was ok to make that comment to us.

Prior to even receiving the pre-wedding photos they wanted us to pay for the second deposit of $1380, I'm guessing to cover their mistake and to lock us in, they wouldn't provide us the photos unless we pay another $1380 which we already paid $1380 for the initial deposit.

All in all out of all this the studio manager at the Pyrmont Dreamlife Sydney Studio Greg McCarry has not once said sorry to us about the issue but continues to believe that they are not in the fault and we are in the wrong, I'm not sure what type of customer service course you went on but it was definitely not a good one, they have refused to refund what we paid them and has only offered a $380 out of the $2760 we've paid them which they have not completed even the pre-wedding photoshoot stage, where they still need to photoshop the photos we liked and develop a 16x24 print for us.

We're currently going through a department of fair trading case with them and will soon go to legalaid and lodge a claim with the NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal.

HIGHLY AVOID DREAMLIFE.

Thank you

Tony

We discussed at great lengths all the details of our wedding day with our photographer and we were assured that we will have the photographer we wanted taking our photos on the day so we paid our deposit. A week before our wedding I still hadn't had any form of contact from the company so I called them just to check everything was confirmed only to be told that the photographer we specifically asked for would not be available for our day so reluctantly we met with the new photographer and again explained exactly what we wanted. When we finally got our proofs back I was devestated, the photos were the exact opposite of what we wanted, he didn't capture specific things we had asked for & at best the photos looked like an amateur had taken them. When I spoke with the manager of the studio & explained how I felt I was basically told that we have already paid so I can either make an album with what we have or you can just keep your proofs. So we decided to make the most of what we had ( which wasn't much). I had to do all the chasing and constantly call them to follow things up, they would take weeks to return my calls if at all. They lied to us from the start and will say anything just to get your money. They are extremely unprofessional and are amateur photographers. It took them just over 2 YEARS to finish our album.
DO NOT USE THIS COMPANY it will only end in heartache and tears.

Our wedding was on 22nd March, 2014
When I first met Dreamlife photography they spoke highly of how good their photographers where & the company standards. We booked our wedding package with them on the 5th Oct 2013 and they assigned us the main photographer for our wedding in March. We Paid the deposit on this day and where sent a confirmation email of this, a few months later when it got closer to the wedding we paid the 2nd payment and they confirmed payment but said we owed them for the first payment still which we paid them cash on the day of booking, the Manager than said he will chase it up and the week of the wedding I still didn’t hear anything about finding the missing money from their side. The day before the wedding our photographer called up confirming he would meet us at our hotel at arrange time in the morning, later that afternoon at 5pm the Manager called me stating “oh sorry there has been a mistake we have put your wedding down for Sunday for one & double booked you”, this was after my photographer called me on Friday afternoon to confirm the wedding for the sat (clearly a total BS from the Manager)! I could not have a go at him like I wanted to as we needed a photographer for the wedding the next day, he said a photographer would call me back soon to arrange for the next day but I didn’t get a call until 830pm that night. I asked the manager why am I getting prioritised second when we were always booked in and he said it was on the board incorrectly & I would be getting a photographer who was trained by the main photographer I was to get. The photographer turned up the next morning and was very pushy & even asked if he could get in our wedding car to come with us for the day and said I am leaving at 1pm when he was to leave at 130pm as arranged with other photographer, I didn’t get many pics at the hotel and the ones I got where not upto a professional standard as parts of the items in the photos where cut out or all the girls were not smiling etc as he only took one shoot’s of me with each bridesmaid which im not to impressed about as I have one picture of myself and my sister who was head bridesmaid. When we got to the ceremony he was late & he took all of the photos of the ceremony kneeling on the ground so most of our photos are angled.

We than did photo’s after the ceremony and I had to call people who I wanted to get pictures with as he did nothing, he had a list of everyone we wanted pictures with but we didn’t get even half of them as I couldn’t remember everyone I wrote on the list as I had other things to worry about on the big day than to be doing the job he was paid for. Later at the locations he once again only got 1 or 2 pics of each pose so everyone in the pictures where not playing attention or smiling. At the reception he didn’t walk around and get pictures unless I told him to.

All in all The Manager has tried to pass of this photographer as a fully qualified photographer but in fact im 99% sure he has actually given us a trainee which the main photographer was training.. The Manager himself should of said I will come out and do your wedding as it was our stuff up.

They then asked me to pay for the cd of photo’s before they would release, I did not pay them anymore money as I was not impressed with the services even without seeing the photos. Once I got the pictures I did not pay for the rest as I only had a few hundred for the day & the rest was for the actual albums which I didn’t get as I didn’t want to deal with them for another 3months.

I would NOT RECOMMAND this company to anyone unless they want to be stressed out on their special day like I was and upset at the whole way it was handled.

AVOID DREAMLIFE PHOTOGRAPHY AUSTRALIA!

I thiink they have a pool of photographers that are not professional but they all sit under the 'professional' banner of Dreamlife.

The photographer we had was so introverted he asked the bride to round up the wedding congregation for the group shot. How pretty...the bride yelling out to round up the people. Then he didnt end up getting the whole group in the shot just like this experience.

And yeah the family shots outside the church were taken in front of a car park. We had a beautiful church and he decided to use the car park as the background. Beautiful!

Then when asked to take candid shots, most of them were of the cameraman (Calling him a cameraman is a stretch, he definately wasnt a photographer, how about I call him the guy with a camera) asking groups of people to look at him and smile. So so so candid.

I could go on...but I think your mates view should seriously be listened to and this company AVOIDED.

PS Laughing at the bride crying is not a good way to resolve a complaint!

AVOID DREAMLIFE PHOTOGRAPHY AUSTRALIA!