Our first wedding video of 2015 and it was such an amazing day for a wedding too! The past couple years I’ve been doing wedding videos, I haven’t been able to do them the way I wanted to do them exactly. Whether it was me making excuses as to why not to do it a certain way or whatever, but with Liz and Dylan’s and with it being a new year I was absolutely going to do their video with the vision I had for wedding video. Ultimately a wedding video in today’s age should not be 20+ minutes long. I know this sounds crazy, but take a moment and think about it. If you watch something for 20 minutes, chances are it’s a sitcom on TV with a 7-figure budget per episode. If you watch something that’s 60, 90+ minutes, chances are you are in a theater watching a movie with a 100+ million dollar budget. And with both of these scenarios you are talking a team of writers and planners, and days (or months) of shooting. A wedding video? 8-10 hours of shooting, and 1-2 people acting as the writers, directors, cinematographers, editors, etc. With all that said our wedding videos are around 3-5 minutes in length. This is the perfect length for a fun yet emotional video that captures everything about your day. It’s not too long where you will get bored with it, or view it as a chore… trust me, in 6.5 years, Natasha and I have yet to watch all of our wedding video! A video 3-5 minutes long will be enjoyable to watch, if you have your friends or family over and you want to watch the video, it’s not a big deal to spend a few minutes doing so.
Anyway, Liz and Dylan are such an amazing couple, seriously, the love they have for one another is unmatched. They have such fun and loving personalities and this made shooting the video almost too easy. We started with prep that morning at Foxy Styles in Effingham, IL. After that, both Liz and Dylan got ready on different floors at Dylan’s family’s house where we also did a first look, which turned out to be amazing! The wedding took place at Freedom Reigns in Christ Church in St. Elmo with simple details, but yet the details created an atmosphere that was definitely Liz and Dylan. It wasn’t overwhelming, but it was enough to make an impact, I was definitely a fan. The reception was a little different than most, and I seriously think this is the way most receptions should be handled. It took place in the fellowship hall at the church, which is a smaller area for the amount of guests they had, but because the ceremony took place earlier in the afternoon, the reception started (and ended) well before dinner time. So it was just a time of hanging out and enjoying snacks and drinks. They did the first dance, father/daughter, mother/son dance through one song so that they would have more time to mingle with friends and family. It was so simple, but yet so perfect. I definitely enjoyed shooting video for them and I’m thrilled with the way it turned out!
