Correcting Casual Wedding Photos

I took casual wedding shots in a mixed lighting environment. I thought I could overcome / overpower the ambient lighting in the lobby area of the hotel by leveraging the LARGE picture windows to my back in the images in the link. As you can see, I was incorrect and I could be faced with a series of dud photos.

I know I can mask the background separately from the people in the image and process them with various layers, but I anticipate many hours per photo to try and save as many of these as possible. Before I chalk this up to being a (or many) lesson learned (don't mix your lighting and use appropriate supplemental lighting, studio or flash heads to properly light your subject), I thought I'd reach out here for any possible miracles/suggestions. Any thoughts on how to salvage? I was considering taking the background black and white and focusing on the bride and groom for any PP.

Fortunately, I was NOT the prime or official wedding photographer. Saving a family relationship is NOT dependent on a miracle. Just trying to help a bride and groom in the family, on a budget. I was just a family member taking some shots at their request before we took for for the wedding on the beach and shots by the pros...

All images shot RAW.

Laughing at the rank amature is allowed, but kindly keep it to yourselves or, at least, to a minimum. Hopefully, if I can't salvage them, someone else may learn from my mistake(s). I am off to the lighting forum to ask how these kinds of setups should be managed...

I looked at your photos and most seem to me to be decent. I think you did a nice job and the couple will welcome a copy of yuor images. There are a couple backlit but you should be able to bring the faces out with a curves adjustment. Good luck, Dennis

Unfortunately the first few were just as you described and I really shouldn't expect anyone to look at most of the images before commenting. I was most interested in the wedding party images.

Here are some before and after photos of a technique using Hue Saturation layer and a mask based on one of the color channels, inverted...

Before:

3 things

1. If you shot in RAW, couldn't you make white balance adjustments using the color temperature slider to get them to a good starting point to convert to jpeg?

2. Only you will know what the correct skin tones are for this group of people, because only you know what they really look like.

3. In regards to the one photo above, it looks like you clipped his left hand. A tighter head and shoulders crop might be just as effective, and de-emphasize some of the background elements.

4. (did I say 3 things?) the pillar in the background is a tad crooked, you may want to try some straightening.

Thanks for your help guys. I did a little better in natural light. What do you think?