Why A Videographer is A Must Have At Every Wedding

When most of us hear that a film camera is present — even someone videoing for Snapchat, it can be common for us to step back in fear of the camera catching us at a bad angle, or in fact — catching us at all. This can be one of the most common reasons that break any desire of having a videographer attend a wedding day, with many just settling that “the Photos will be enough.” Some other reasons would include wedding videos we saw growing up – the staged cheese, the cringe worthy moments and the dodgy camera moves.

My Story

Let me tell you a quick story. It is not specifically a wedding related story, but it gives me foundation to follow on from my opening paragraph.

Christmas 1993. I was 9 years old, awaiting Santa on Christmas Eve just like any other excited kid. Myself and my younger brother were awake all night and my other 6 older siblings were downstairs along with my mother and father. They could hear the prancing of my brother and I upstairs as they celebrated in the living area. We weren’t allowed down, as then Santa wouldn’t be able to come!

In the middle of the night, our bedroom door opened and in walked my elder sister with a video camera. We had never really seen one but as children in the 90’s we were fascinated by it. She had borrowed it from a friend. She was floating around our room with it capturing our complete excitement at what was to come in the early hours of the morning, when we were finally permitted to go downstairs.

Our house at Christmas back then was a crazy fusion of tight spaces, craziness, excitement and celebration. There were 8 of us along with our parents all crammed into one small house in Dublin. It was great! Mum and Dad invested so much into making sure we had the best Christmas. It was always so focused around being together as family.

The best part of Christmas Day is definitely the early morning when Santa has arrived and when everyone exchanges gifts. My sister caught all of this on her friends camcorder, the laughter, the love, the dodgy looks at some of the gifts presented, myself and my brother as children and our parents watching in adoration as we opened our gifts.

We all watched this soon after Christmas on the VCR and it was the best thing ever, to look back on what is one of our most cherished memories ever. It was the first video we had of our family together. Little did we know how cherished it would become back then, as it became our first and last. You see, in the following year – our father was diagnosed with a terminal illness and given two months to live. He passed away within exactly 2 months. It shattered our lives.

Now, 25 years later as an adult. The only visual and audible memory we have of our father is this video tape. And obviously with time, our family has greatly expanded into several extended families. This has become the only motion picture we have of us all together as one family.

We once misplaced the video and couldn’t find it and to say that it upset us is an understatement, however one day it magically appeared again in a chest we had – and still to this day we don’t know how it got there. But we are just so happy that we have this and will ensure its safety for as long as we can. And I have managed to digitise it. This has become gold dust and every time we watch it, it resurfaces all of the emotions we long to remember.

We have tonnes of photos of our family, our father, our father and mother but they do not come close to what this video does when we watch it. We can hear voices, see motion, see the smiles, see the frowns and watch love in motion! It brings us back to that happy moment in our lives.

Capturing memories in film

This now brings me back to a wedding day. A wedding day for me is just like this moment but even more, it brings all of the people we love most together. It arouses so many emotions and even the odd dodgy dance move! The moments that can happen in this one day are endless and to think of how valuable looking back on this will be 10 years after the wedding when life has moved on and (let’s be honest.) some of those people will no longer be around – its priceless.

This is the main reason that lead me into becoming a wedding videographer. That 1993 video was my reason. The power of video can be so understated until you experience your own. Even if I am not the one to capture your day, trust me – it’s going to be one of the best decisions you will make. And if you feel moved to reach out to me and I have the honour of being entrusted by you, well then – I will guarantee you that I will capture the perfect, simple moments that I just know are going to make the biggest difference to your memories for the rest of your life.