Hello? Hi. I'm the wedding photographer. Oh Hi!!! How did they come out? Do i look fat? Well, actually... I'm sorry but I have some bad news. Was Trevor picking his nose? Worse: my husband destroyed all your wedding pix.  Oh my God!!! Did he spill coffee on them? Sort of. It's really a guy thing.  Are all husbands like this? I'm afraid so, eventually.  Oh... Thank you soooo much for telling me in time to get an annulment!

Also in the event that you are too afraid, or possibly too knowledgeable about computers to do it yourself, there are tons of services out there that will handle data recovery, you can expect it to cost around $300-$500, and probably be set back a week or 2 of time, but that is still far better option then being out a job, companies like drivesavers, disk doctors, salvage data recovery etc... again, they aren't cheap, but odds are just one of those clients data is worth more then that, and multiple clients + risk of lost business reputation damage etc... and yes for future, invest in a few extra hard drives, and probably an online backup service etc... Risking your career on a single point of failure, never good.

Always, always, always back up your files, and backup your backups if need be. And never let anyone try to "fix" your hardware unless they are certified to do so.

OK, seriously. I'm not even a professional photographer, and I back up my photos automatically every night, and I never delete the photos from the original memory card until I know they've been backed up. Memory cards are cheap, and you're a professional. Are you even erasing them in the first place? You should still have the photos on the original memory cards.

Redundant array of independent disks. Look it up.

While that does suck you should have a back up of these photos, if you didn't then you deserve it indefinitely.

Are you saying you are a wedding photographer that uses digital media but you don't create redundant digital backups of your assets? You deserve to be sued, for one. Second of all, apparently you don't know what formatting means either because you can restore the files. Formatting deletes file reference tables, not the files. You deserves it.

THIS CAN STILL BE RECOVERED, especially if you've done nothing with it since then. You can either have a data recovery expert take care of it for you or purchase a data recovery program. If the prices are anywhere close to comparable, I'd have the data recovery expert take care of it.

Wow - that sucks big time. I used to work for a photo shop that also covered weddings back in the days of film, and developing the film from wedding shoots was something that was taken incredibly seriously, as there was simply no going back. One of my favourite things about digital is how easy it is to circumvent problems that were deal-breakers with film. The advice of everyone here to not touch the drive and get it straight to a professional data recovery service is spot on. There is a halfway decent chance they'll be able to lift things off it. Frankly, anything is better than the situation you're in now.

Stupid is what stupid does!