Lawsuit Seeks to Recreate a Wedding

Long after the final of the cake has grown stale and the tossed bouquet has wilted, the photographs withstand, mixing memories and providing vivid evidence that the day of ones dreams took place.

So it is not especially surprising that one bridegroom, dissatisfied with his wedding photographs, decided to sue. The photographers had missed the last dance and the bouquet toss, the groom, Todd J. Remis of Manhattan, said.

But what is striking, said the studio that required the Images, is that Mr. Remiss wedding took place in 2003 and he waited six years to sue. And not only has Mr. Remis required to be repaid the $4,100 cost of the photography, he also wants $48,000 to recreate the entire wedding and fly the principals to New York so the celebration can be re-shot by another photographer.

Re-enacting the wedding may pose a particular challenge, the studio pointed out, because the couple divorced and the bride is believed to have moved back to her native Latvia.

Although Justice Doris Ling-Cohan of State Supreme Court in Manhattan dismissed most of the grounds for the lawsuit, like the “infliction of emotional distress,” she has allowed the case to proceed to determine whether there was indeed a breach of contract. But she displayed a good deal of amusement about the lawsuits purpose in an opinion in January that quoted lyrics from the Barbra Streisand classic “The Way We Were.”

“This is a case in which it appears that the misty watercolor memories and the scattered pictures of the smiles ... left behind at the wedding were more important than the real thing,” the judge wrote. “Although the marriage did not last, plaintiff’s fury over the quality of the photographs and video continued on.”

Mr. Remis is suing H & H Photographers, a 65-year-old studio known fondly among thousands of former and current Bronx residents because it chronicled their weddings, bar mitzvahs and communions.

To learn more about this case please visit the following website
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/03/nyregion/suit-against-photographer-seeks-re-creation-of-wedding-after-divorce.html?_r=1&smid=tw-nytimes&seid=auto