The Virginian-Pilot
©
Loved the honeymoon. Hated coming back. // That was especially true for Kyle Billips and Jennifer Kuklica Billips of Chesapeake. When they returned Monday night from Cabo San Lucas in Mexico, they learned that all of their wedding photos - more than 1,000 images - had been stolen from their wedding photographer's SUV in downtown Norfolk, along with all of her photo equipment. Backups were on a computer... which also was swiped.
"It's been a rough couple of days," Jennifer Billips said.
The distressed photographer, a friend of the groom's family, is offering a $500 reward, no questions asked, for the return of the digital camera card that contains the irreplaceable images; contact information is on the card.
Keep the equipment, she says.
And the happy couple - happy at least until they ran into the nightmare of newlyweds and wedding photographers everywhere - are trying to be philosophical. Jennifer Billips noted recent news stories about a North Carolina groom killed in a crash hours before his wedding, and the Yale student killed days before hers, and said she is grateful that she and Kyle still have each other.
Philosophy works only to a point, though.
"People say, 'Oh, your wedding was so beautiful - that's what people will remember,' " Jennifer Billips said. "But I want the photos."
Jennifer, 23, a real estate broker, and Kyle, 25, a Chesapeake firefighter, married Sept. 12 in Chesapeake, with a reception in Portsmouth. Sometime on Sept. 15 or 16 a thief made off with roughly $2,800 in Canon photo gear and other items from the photographer's vehicle, parked in the Dominion Tower garage, according to a police report. Neither the Billips family nor the photographer told the couple or anyone else right away, lest word leak out on Facebook or someplace and spoil their honeymoon.
They have bridal portraits from before the wedding. And "tons" of honeymoon pictures. The photographer - who asked not to be named because she feared the thief already had personal information about her - suggested Kyle Billips again rent his tuxedo and she'd re-shoot photos of them together. But gone are the family portraits and images from the reception, which they said was such a blur to them.
Left is their faint hope that "someone will feel sorry for us and give back the disc," Jennifer Billips said. If so, call (252) 339-2376.
In the meantime, she and Kyle are scrounging copies of snapshots from their 270 wedding guests, most of whom, it can charitably be said, aren't professional-quality photographers.
"We still haven't gotten a single one that was good yet," Jennifer Billips said.
Matthew Bowers, (757) 222-3893, matthew.bowers@pilotonline.com
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On the bright side there is
On the bright side there is like a 50% chance the marriage won't last anyways, right?
This Is Frustrating!
It is frustrating for the couple! Why didn't the "photographer" take the memory card out of the camera so the pictures wouldn't have been stolen from the camera? Why didn't the photographer have a back up plan? Someone broke into my home and stole over $2000 of my belongings, including my computer, computer hardware, 2 camcorders, a cd player, and cds. I have over 3000 photos on my hard drive. But I always keep 2 back up copies of the photos that I take. And the wedding photographer should have saved every single photo on to two different sources immediately after the reception.
What is needed
Is a punishment that thieves fear. As it stands thieves steal with impunity because they know that even if they get caught, not much will happen to them.
There are ways to fix this.
Stolen Pictures
I cannot believe that all your comments are focused on the photographer and not the thief. We all make mistakes. The photographer shouldn’t have left the camera in the car, but they did. What is the real mistake here is the thief breaking in to their car and stealing their equipment. I hope your mistakes are never publicized so your face can be rubbed in it. As if the photographer doesn’t feel enough guilt, your comments I’m sure are helping raise their self-esteem.
Hmp I've had two vehicle
Hmp I've had two vehicle thefts (one was a break in) in the past month or so in downtown Norfolk. Right near one of the light rail stops. At least once Light Rail is operational the city will make $1.50 off of each crime. This was not a parking garage.
People trek from the low income housing to the better neighborhoods and steal stuff. In one recent case 5 people beat up a Virginia Stage Company employee and stole his cell phone, sending him to the hospital.
Arm Chair Journalist
I didn't realize there are so many journalist in the area! Perhaps printing this story will create enough public awareness that the thief, or someone who knows who the thief is, will return the photos. Whenever you hear stories of people losing their homes to some type of disaster, one of the things they take the hardest is the loss of family photos. A wedding is a once in a lifetime moment that can't be replaced. Thousands of dollars are spent creating this special day so it is indeed a tragic event for this couple to not have the pictures of their day to share with their children and future generations. Certainly there are worse things that can happen, but just as another reader posted, what if it happened to you? I hope someone will read the article, do the right thing and help this couple get their pictures back.
And if you have cherished
And if you have cherished photos, take them all, scan them, and store them offsite. You could even take advantage of a free email service like Hotmail or Gmail, make up a long random email address, and email all of the data there. Don't use it for email, just use it for storage. There are other services that offer this, or just buy a $50 external hard drive or two, copy all of your stuff to it and give it to a trusted relative. Let them do the same and give you their drive. So if your joint burns down, your safe.
Of course it's easy to preach this kind of stuff, but while most of my personal hard drives have *some* sort of backup, it's not off-site. I should follow my own advice.
That stinks!
Yes, the wedding is great and such a happy time, but it all happens so fast, and the whole day is one big blur. You are so busy going through the motions of everything that you don't have much time to really sit back and enjoy it. The pictures really do end up becoming priceless. It's how you remember the day. I would be so upset if I didn't have mine. I really wish this couple the best of luck =)
pictures
Im so sorry to read about your pictures. Some jerks broke into our new home August 27th( we hadnt even moved in yet just a box here and there) and took all of our family pictures along with other things.I sort of understand the other things BUT our pictures like yours are only valuable to us.
I hope you get yours back somehow!
Pstone
This Article Was the Page One Banner Headline...
...in today's print version of The Pilot. You folks who argue, correctly, that this is a human interest story--you are right, but it should be in the Daily Break section. The gaudy display is just typical of today's daily newspapers, struggling to survive. This is truly what is known as "dumbing down" the news.