Do I need a Wedding Videographer?
My story.
If you are looking for reasons to hire a Videographer to capture your wedding day, today is your day. I’m writing this from personal experience, as a client, trying not to be biased.
My wife and myself were on the verge of not having our wedding filmed; because of budget and I couldn’t find someone whose work I liked (This was back in Argentina), and even harder to do with our tight budget.
Luckily we found a great filmmaker who was available. We had to stretch a bit on our budget but it was SOOO WORTH IT!! I mean, don’t get me wrong, we love our photos and our photographer is super skilled and lovely to have, but we find ourselves watching our wedding video WAYYYY more than looking at our photos.
Those 7, 10 or 12 minute-long videos are great when you want to relieve the whole wedding day without missing much. But we mostly end up watching our 3-5 minute video highlight. Every time we watch it, we are taken back to that special day as if was yesterday. It brings all the emotions to life!
Okay, enough about my story, time to get to the point!
Here are a few reasons why YOU should hire a WEDDING Videographer:
"The #1 reason I’m glad we hired you was because a video allows us to relive the day *much* more genuinely compared to photos. You can see emotion in photos, but you can’t hear audio like in a video. We can listen to our vows and hear the same intent and emotion, over and over, like we are listening to it for the first time. To me, that audio is priceless.
It wasn’t just the audio either.. the way our video was edited completely captured this in-motion love story. But to me, it’s important to hire a videographer that has the skills to piece it all together.
We obviously didn’t have family at our elopement, so it was great that we could show the video to our loved ones when we got home. And the best part was they felt like they were with us in the moment.
For those that have guests at their wedding, I would imagine a video would be great because they could enjoy moments that they may have missed!"
- Cassandra (One of my precious brides)
#1 Audio is the key of it all!
Your vows, ceremony, toasts, and live music cannot be photographed!
You can get a photo of your written vows, but it will not portray the full emotion of every moment. You’ll be grateful for having this captured, and hopefully you’ll drop some tears of joy.
There’s nothing like getting to hear your spouse read their vows to you in that exact moment, but getting to see and hear that moment, again and again, is a very close second.
What about the roasts?!… I mean, toasts! haha. Handcrafted jokes that will bring so many memories back. Details that will get frozen if you just get stills.
As for the music: that’s the glue that ties the entire day together. How many days of your life will have a literal soundtrack? A song that will automatically make you think of your wedding day and remember everything within just the first few seconds.
#2 Not everyone will attend. Share it.
It’s not ideal, but there’s always a group of people not able to attend, and even a larger group if it’s a destination wedding. Or you may even have to cut down the list because of costs.
So, having a wedding film allows everyone that didn’t make it thru, to feel as they were part of it. To enjoy this with you.
Photos are great, but motion it’s what sets the video apart. They will walk the aisle alongside you, they will laugh with your guests, and cry with your families. But mostly, they will submerge in your story in a front-seat row.
Because of this, we, videographers, will give a YouTube link that you’ll be able to post and share with ease.
Some of the brides from an article at The Knot:
"I just got married in June, and we had both a photographer and a videographer. I am so, so, so thankful that we ended up going with the video. It was something we almost cut to save money, but it was so worth it! When we got the pictures back, there were many guests and moments that were missed—and thankfully were caught by the video. I hate being filmed, but I never even noticed him throughout the day." — megc2
"I regret not having one. I thought that I'd never watch it and I'd have my pictures, but there's a lot of your wedding that, as the bride, you don't get to see. For example, I wish I could see what was going on inside my ceremony tent before I got there. I wish I could see my bridesmaids walk in. The whole thing went by so fast—I'd kill to have more memories of it." — starrbuk13
#3 Don't miss a thing. BE OmnipresenT.
On your big day, you will both have so much in your head! There will be moments that you won’t remember or even be part of (you can’t be everywhere at the same time). So with a wedding video, you’ll be able to see the most important moments of every corner. Yes, a photo could be capturing some of those moments, but being an ecstatic moment frozen in an image, you won’t be able to understand what was happening then, it takes the context out of it.
You’ll be surprised of how much information can be cramped up in such a short video.
#4 Relive moments over and over.
At any time, any place!
There’s nothing like the feel of opening your beautiful, physical, leathered, silky wedding album and turning pages, while you take your time to breathe every single image. But let’s be honest it’s not common that you’ll have the book with you in the right place at the right time. You could show them your online album, where they’ll be lots of repeated images, some without context (as mentioned before), and you’ll have to keep them hooked during the 500 photos you’ll get.
Yes, this point has been implied in the previous ones, but I want to reiterate the point that you can easily open your wedding video, in your phone, computer, or TV, wherever, whenever, just one click away.
Trust me, have been countless the times that my wife pulls out her phone and we’ve watched our film right before bedtime. Your wedding film will be your new “Netflix and chill”.
#5 Motion. EMOTION.
There’s no such thing like “Poker face”.
With video you’ll see true emotions, it won’t be a frozen moment where you don’t know if they are laughing, crying, or both at once.
The main focus of your videographer should be to piece together a video that represents you as a couple and tells your story. But mostly that portrays actual emotions and make you feel empathic.
You should be laughing and crying at your screen.
And if you do, I know I’ve done my job right.
