Professional Wedding Photographer - or friend?

PROFESSIONAL WEDDING PHOTOGRAPHY .. OR USE A FRIEND?

I often hear tales of brides and groom-to-be  delegating the task of their wedding photography to a friend or an Uncle, or a relative with a lovely new camera they received at Christmas.
Indeed, like all full-time professional wedding photographers, I have also had experience with losing out to 'a freind' with a camera who is 'quite good' at photography and will save the couple 'a fortune' ... 
You know where I am going to go with this, or rather, I'm not .. but I thought I would put some LINKS on this page as I come across them so that you can make up your own opinion ...... 
Sometimes I take up 2.5% or 5% of a bride's budget .. on other occasions maybe as much as 35% .... but for those people, whatever they spend on my services, they know how important photography is to them as part of their overall budget for their wedding, they have done their research and decided that lots of natural photography, keeping mums and dads and grandparents happy too, is the way to go .....
Read some of the sad stories and see some of the awful images from a wedding day disaster, HERE on RockNRollBride .. .and HOW MUCH SHOULD YOU PAY FOR YOUR WEDDING PHOTOGRAPHY ... ?
£500 ...  £1500 .... OR £4,000 .... WHICH WOULD YOU CALL HIGH-END ? .. See HERE
DIRK VAN DER WERFF