A Photographer Broke Down On TikTok After Losing A Wedding Photo Shoot & It Was A Nightmare

Wedding photos are one of the most prized possessions for a newlywed couple so losing them is likely every couple's nightmare.

In a TikTok video, a photographer shared a story about how that happened to him after he took photos of a couple on their wedding day and said the worst part was having to tell the bride.

TikToker Justin Gummow started the video off by saying the worst thing that could happen to a photographer when shooting a wedding "happened to me."

"I was transferring the photos and the card got corrupted and I lost all the photos. My card didn't just get copied over, it got cut and copied over so the card was erased," he explained.

"As you can expect I panicked and I bought a bunch of programs to try to have the card restored," he continued.

After having them restored, the photos were still corrupted.

"I sat there and I cried for a minute and I said this is the worst, this sucks, I have to call the bride and I have to let her know that all those memories from her day that she paid a professional photographer to take are gone."

Gummow said he called the bride and took full responsibility. He also offered the couple a full refund and a reshoot of the wedding portraits.

"My equipment was faulty, not that I bought faulty equipment, but sh*t happens sometimes and that's not an excuse, that's not OK."

The photographer said he later came up with a way to save some of the photos by transferring them to his phone.

"I used the WiFi on my camera to transfer the JPEG previews from my camera to my phone," he said. "I hope it doesn't happen to anybody else and I learned a whole lot of lessons."

In a statement, Gummow told Narcity some of the photos were "unretrievable" but he managed to recover most of the photos.

"The quality is fine. Not billboard size but bigger than the couple would need for most applications," he said "I spoke with the bride and she was happy and understanding. Her and her husband are the sweetest people I could have ever worked with."

The video has gone viral since it was posted with over 17 million views and many people have expressed that Gummow's experience has unlocked a "new fear."

Others revealed that they have gone through a similar experience.

"I lost all of my wedding photos due to this exact situation 😢," one person said.

"This happened with the first & last wedding I ever filmed. Everything was destroyed," another person shared.

Many other people were supportive towards Gummow and appreciated how much the photographer cared about what happened.

"This is a good photographer regardless of what happened. You can tell he cares," one TikToker wrote.

One viewer questioned why Gummow didn't use two memory cards while taking the wedding pictures writing, "I can’t believe how many photographers don’t shoot with a memory card in both slots."

In a follow-up video Gummow said his camera did have more than one slot, he just forgot the extra memory cards at home.

"I just made a mistake because I'm a human being and it has to happen once and that just happened to be the day," he said.

Gummow tells Narcity he learned a lot from his experience.

"One is to put spare memory cards in my car just in case," he said. "I had grabbed the wrong bag that didn't have my memory cards on my way out to the wedding. I have a check list of things I grab before a wedding, but Im unfortunately just a human, so I will triple check next time."

This article's right-hand cover image was used for illustrative purposes only.