Need advice salvaging wedding photos with watermark

Hi everyone,

I’m hoping for some advice because I feel really stuck right now.

I think my husband and I may have been scammed by our wedding photographer, and I’m trying to figure out if there is any way to salvage our wedding photos. We were only supposed to receive around 20 edited images, but it has now been months with no response. Our calls and messages do not seem to be going through, his website no longer works, and his phone number appears to no longer be working either.

At this point, I’m not even worried about getting fully edited photos anymore. I would just be grateful to have usable versions of the images in any form. The only photos we currently have access to have a watermark on them. I included one photo so you can see what the watermark looks like.

I’m not very experienced with photo editing, but I could try to work on them later if I had files that were salvageable. We had a very small wedding with family, so the idea of ending up with no usable photos from that day is honestly really upsetting.

Does anyone know if there is any way to salvage photos without ruining the quality too badly? Or is there a type of editor/service I should be looking for?

Any advice would really mean a lot. Thank you.