Couple horrified as photographer disappears before wedding after paying £3,000 deposit
Niamh Shackleton
Featured Image Credit: Nine News/A Current Affair
An Australian couple were left horrified after a photographer fled with £3,000 worth of their money.
Monika and John - who didn't divulge their surnames - were set to wed this month and paid the popular Sydney photographer $6,000 AUD to secure him to snap their special day.
But as their nuptials grew closer, Monika tried to get in touch with the wedding photographer - but to no avail.
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"He was not responsive by email, I couldn't get in touch with him through phone calls, he was just you know, off the grid," Monika said to news programme A Current Affair.
The soon-to-be married couple then proceeded to contact another company and found out that the photography firm had been bought out by them.
Despite this, the new owner insisted that they'd only acquired the business name, not the booking and clients, and therefore wouldn't be shooting their wedding.
Definitely not the kind of drama you need a few weeks before your wedding.
Laith Jabro from A2Z Weddings then came to John and Monika's rescue just three weeks before their big day.
He was also contacted by ten other couples that had been left up a creek without a paddle by the same photographer Monika and John had originally booked with.
"It's extremely stressful, extremely stressful," Jabro said.
"I mean, if people [booked] a year ahead and they lost some money, maybe there's plenty of time to reorganise things, but two to three weeks, four weeks. It's very hard.Monika and the other jilted brides and grooms are now calling for the original photographer to be found.
"We deserve an answer, we don't deserve to be left in the dark. I want my money back," she said.
A Current Affair has previously looked into another Australian photographer who failed to turn up to her customer's wedding days and refused to give them their deposits back.
As a result, the snapper was facing a fine up to $220,000 AUD (£161,000) in 2014.
She'd received a string of complaints over the years, with The NSW Department of Fair Trading stating that it had received over 30 in total.
The investigative show went on to track down the photographer who claimed that she intended on paying people back their money.
But Katie Dixon, a woman who'd paid for the photographer's services at her wedding at the time, wasn't optimistic that she would see her money again.
"I'll never get that back. I'll never get the opportunity to be able to get those photos back," she told A Current Affair.
"She's walked away, taking everyone's money."
NSW Fair Trading minister Matthew Mason-Cox went on to say that they 'want to hold her to account for all the damage she has caused to all of these brides and grooms'.
It's unclear if the woman ever paid the clients their money back.