Back story: last year in Venice we realized we only had a couple bad cellphone pics of us costumed. We pondered over what to do when it kinda hit me....our good friend is not only a pro photographer, she also has never been to Venice.
I executed a cunning plan.
We invited her along, as our photographer, and instead of paying her (higher) fee she normally charges (then her losing a bunch of it to airfare etc) we just said what if we picked up your ticket and the hotel, most meals, and you did some piccies of us a couple days out of the week.
She delightfully agreed, her sir picked up the tab for his ticket and a few other meals/spritz tabs, and everyone was beyond happy.
And we just got some of her photos (not yet post-processed these are just the jpegs that correspond to her RAW files she'll ultimately use for the final products) and holy HELL.
I couldn't be more delighted with the outcome.