I could spend hours watching wedding videos (check out LoveStoriesTV for all the gorg videos you could ever wish for!), but when it came to our own wedding, my husband and I weren’t sure if that was really “us.” While we wanted our wedding day captured on film, we didn’t necessarily need a highly stylized and edited video.
Ultimately, we hired a videographer who would essentially play “uncle with a camcorder” on our day, inspired by one of my family’s home movies.
My family has a video (now thankfully on YouTube!) from the 1940s filmed on a Keystone Camera that captures—at times in color—a relative’s wedding day. My best guess would be that it’s my grandmother’s cousin. In the 90s, my great uncle placed audio on top of the film, sharing who everyone was throughout the film along with quick stories. I don’t know how it ended up on YouTube, but I am extremely thankful that it did. The full video is over 20 minutes long and captures the small moments of the day (see below for a small snippet!). It’s also a gift to see my grandma in her 20s—she passed when I was 3. I absolutely treasure this video.
We shared this film as inspiration with our videographer and aside from the uncle with camcorder reference, we gave him a few questions to ask our guests such as “how do you know the bride and groom?” and “what advice would you give the newlyweds?” to spark some conversation. He started filming while we were getting ready and stayed through the reception, and while of course filming us, it was largely focused on our friends and family.
Ben has experience in video editing, so we only asked for the raw footage, which we received the next day. We figured that we could cut the footage down to around 1-2 in our own time. We still haven’t gotten around to the editing—though we did watch the first half of it on our wedding anniversary!—but we will tackle that project in time.
Are you planning to use a traditional wedding videographer, or are you looking into alternative ideas?
