Promised you reception coverage details - here they are!

Our “Modern Bride” coverage includes preparation and ceremony coverage, edited together and shown at your reception.

To this coverage, you can add reception coverage - we’ll cover the highlights of your reception - introduction, cake/champagne, garter/bouquet, first dances - edit them together and show them at the end of the reception (if time allows - otherwise we deliver it to you within 2 weeks).   We also will include all of your toasts in that package as well.

Take a look at our offerings and see what the best fit is for your wedding and your personal style - we want to make your favorite movie ever !

We are rolling out some new packages to make our services even more customized for our brides and grooms - our “Modern Bride” packages. It will be a bit before we get our main website up to date, so we’re using our blog to help launch our new offerings. Many of our brides want more cutting-edge coverage - and we are providing it. The foundation of our Modern Bride offerings is our same-day edit.

We cover church preparations and your ceremony, do a same-day edit, and show it at your reception. A same-day edit is the best moments of your ceremony - vows, rings, kiss - edited either cinematically (romantic music, dreamy shots) or more of an indie-film look (a bit of a more edgy, indie-film feel). Party favor DVDs can be handed out to your guests as they leave your reception - what better memento of your wedding than your wedding! Within 2 weeks of your wedding, you will also receive a one-camera version of your full ceremony. This is a strong trend in wedding videography today.

Any of our creative options - Photo Montage, “Engagement Shoot” (story of your meeting, falling in love, getting engaged - also known as a “Love Story”), Music Video, extended Pre-Ceremony Preparations, and Rehearsal Dinner coverage - can be added to our Modern Bride packages as well. Tomorrow we’ll talk about how reception coverage can work with this package.
For couples that want to wow their guests and get their video quickly, with minimal post-wedding editing, this could be a great choice.
Give us a call today - let’s talk about your wedding and how we can best preserve the memories of your wedding day!

Well, OK, techincally it is February - but we have a lot to say!

Sorry about our long absence from the blog - I must confess we lost our login and password, and were just so busy, we hadn’t had time to mess with it. But we’re back, and I’ve taped the login and password to my monitor so I can’t forget them again.

The 4EVER group, an international organization for Wedding Videographers, holds its annual convention in Florida each January. Boy, what a hardship to get on a plane when it was 12 below (wind chill) and fly to sunny Orlando! This year was even more special for us - Don and I were chosen to present a seminar on how to produce a Wedding Day Music Video. We do a lot of them - but found out last summer that very few videographers offer this, and many more think that it is a hard or scary thing to do - so we spread the word, educating attendees about how to produce them. It was a great experience, and of course going to the convention itself as always filled our heads with new ideas and trends in the video industry.

Which leads to the next topic - new ideas and trends in the wedding industry! I will be writing a series of posts over the next week explaining new offerings we have, neat stuff we picked up at the convention, and just my usual musings about wedding video. Check back regularly!

OK - Here is a cool site -

www.weddingmapper.com

It allows you to create a map of the locations of your ceremony, reception, hotel, rehearsal dinner, and so forth.  It allows your guests to see on the map where the locations are - and they have really cute little icons (ex. wedding cake for the reception location) and your guests can print driving directions from, for example, the hotel to the wedding, the wedding to the reception, etc.

Include the link in emails, or enclose it with other information you are sending guests.  You can even embed it in your wedding website if you have one.

Each location can include notes to your guests such as: “Wedding begins at X time; park in the large lot to the west of the church”.

A bride’s mom gave me this website this past week to get directions to her daughter’s locations, and I just had to share it.

Have fun!

Wendy and Chad had a lovely wedding at St. Columbkille in Papillion, with a reception at St. Robert Bellamine in Omaha. It was a big family celebration, and really fun to be a part of!

Between the ceremony and reception, Wendy, Chad, the wedding party and family members went to the park to shoot - a music video (one of our most popular choices among brides). When they initially contacted us about selecting us as their videographers, they had their song already picked out. Could we, they asked, recreate the “Shrek in the Swamp Karaoke Dance Party” ? Sure!

This was definitely our most complex music video to date. We made a list of the shots that needed to be filmed, and the “cast” we would need. Wendy and Chad picked the people to be specific “cast members” based on their personalities, which was great. We used 2 shooting crews and captured all of the shots that we needed in under an hour. They loved the results!

One of my favorite parts of Wendy and Chad’s wedding was how very family-oriented everyone was. I saw the teenagers in the family looking after the smaller kids, and always an open arm for a crying baby or sleepy toddler. It was so nice to be surrounded by such a great family.

And - something that amazes me (I am not known for my domestic skills) - her mom made her dress! It just blows me away how beautiful it came out. We filmed part of the process for a “bridal elegance” session that we will be producing - soon!

Sunny and Josh got married on a very fitting day - a sunny afternoon in October! Their ceremony was at a beautiful church in Gretna - St. Patrick’s - that has undergone a beautiful restoration in the last few years.

Sunny and Josh opted to shoot a music video - one of our most popular options with our brides and grooms - to the song “I Believe in a Thing Called Love” by The Darkness - a really rockin, fun song (that we had never heard of). We spent about 1/2 hour shooting the shots we needed at a park in Omaha, as well as some at the reception. We also had fun shooting a few bits at the salon and groom’s house that morning. We don’t have that one on our website yet, but we will soon - check back!
Her bridesmaids’ dresses were very striking - the dresses were a dark brown, with a hot-pink beaded trim around the top of the strapless bodice, continuing down the dress. Her flowers were multi-colored fall colored flowers, a really pretty effect.

Overall - a really fun day with a really fun couple!

I know I’m somewhat biased about hiring a videographer (good idea) rather than using a friend or relative (not so good idea) - but here are 2 stories I was told in the last week.

Went to a home party last week where there were several women who had been married in the last few years.  I asked one gal, married about 3 years, pregnant with her 2nd child, if she had used a videographer.  She said, “No, a friend of my husband did it for us.”  I asked her if it had turned out well - she said “I don’t know - we haven’t seen it yet.”  That would be frustrating.

Then, yesterday, a recently married bride called us.  She had had a relative do her video, and it was “shaky, blurry, motion-sickness inducing at times” and she wanted to see if we could fix it.  Well, the technology does exist - but it is very time consuming and takes a lot of computer time to do.  When she asked about pricing, we told her that we would need to sit down with her, look at the video, and see how much needed cleaning up - but that it would be at least $50 per finished minute, due to the extreme amount of time involved.

For a typical wedding, our finished DVD would include the complete ceremony (most are 30-60 minutes long, sometimes longer), an edited ceremony, reception coverage, and highlights of the day - about 2 hours (120 minutes).  It would have been much more cost-effective if she had hired us to do it right - and she has lost her chance to capture those memories forever.

We use great cameras - quality audio equipment - and most importantly - professional videographers, who have in-depth knowledge of how to shoot and edit your wedding memories.  A camera and a tripod do not make a videographer - and I could produce a better finished video with a consumer camera and my knowledge, than an amateur could with the best equipment.
Something to think about - Video is not expensive - it’s priceless.

Got a request yesterday from a bride and groom that I don’t get often - to receive a copy of their source footage - in other words, the raw video that we shoot throughout the day, that we edit and turn into the finished DVD.

I have mixed feelings about giving this to brides and grooms.  The usual stress of having to worry all day about what I might say (when I know I’m not going to use the audio from that camera), how will my shots look to an untrained eye, that type of thing.

But the real reason I don’t like to give it out is this … If you’ve ever been to Disney World (or similar theme park) - Mickey isn’t allowed in Guest areas without his full costume on - to avoid breaking the “magic” that allows us to believe that it really is Mickey standing there.  It’s not too different with the type of wedding video I produce.  With the right music, color correction, speed, etc. an ordinary clip of, say, the bride sliding her foot into her shoe becomes a graceful, emotional moment … and in raw footage, it looks a lot like someone putting on her shoe.  I don’t want to spoil the “magic” my brides and grooms feel when they watch their video - the romance, the emotion that I try and create for them to share.  You don’t want to see the moments that may not have gone well … the flower girl crying, your mom angry at the florist, a drunk guest interrupting the interview we were doing with your grandmother.  Let us show you the great moments, the moments you’ll want to remember forever, the emotional and romantic moments.  Let us do our job - to give you the best and the brightest moments from your day.
Just today’s thought on wedding video …

I want to address this tip to my brides, bridesmaids, and maids-of-honor (maid-of-honors?) -

To phrase this delicately - be aware of yourself as you adjust the front of your dresses -  many ladies have the unconscious habit if hitching up and otherwise adjusting the fit of their dress throughout the day - remember, a lot of people are watching you!

Another tip - if you can walk in your dress without picking up your skirt, do so - it looks so much more elegant and graceful as you walk.  Again, this is something we all do unconsciously, so practice a bit to see if you can.  (Of course, if you can’t - then do hold it up!  No tripping and falling in the aisle! )

Attended a lovely wedding this weekend in Logan, IA. The bride and groom had known each other - literally - since nursery school (I had a photo of them together in nursery school in their photo montage). After 5 years of dating, it was time to tie the knot! Their wedding was on a golf course, outside, overlooking a lovely lake. The weather was cooperative - clear skies, sunshine, not too hot - and the ceremony was beautiful. The DJ provided a sound system so that the vows, readings, and soloist could be heard well by all the guests. The bride’s aunt sang several songs during the ceremony, giving it a special personal touch. And the photographer had been friends with the bride’s mother since Kindergarten! Bandstand Music (Curtis) was the DJ for the evening, and he did a great job of keeping it hoppin’ on the dance floor. And - I have to say - probably the yummiest wedding cake I’d ever tasted - I am going to have to contact the bride and see who baked her cake - I’ll post it when I find out. All in all it was a great day - very friendly people, calm bride and groom, just a very pleasant day for us!