Confessions of a Former Bride | Pt 12

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November 13, 2012

I wrote down “Confessions of a Former Bride” underneath today’s date on my google calendar as part of my monthly blog schedule. I had no idea what it would be about, and as I sat down to write this post, I felt my brain completely shutting down. Can I blame my frazzled-ness on daylight savings time?  I thought about it for a while and I remembered the one thing I have regretted for a while…not hiring a videographer!

One of my favorite photographers, Katelyn James, blogged about this a little while back, and I thought I would too. Like Katelyn did, we splurged and invested in photographers we loved and figured we wouldn’t miss videography all that much. We paid for our entire wedding ourselves and my original photography budget  (HAHA don’t laugh at me ) in 2008 when I first started planning was only 500 dollars. So once we spent almost six times my original (and laughable) photography budget, there just wasn’t any extra room for videography.

At the time I didn’t think that it was that big of a deal…that I wouldn’t miss not having a video since I hate hearing my voice on tape anyway. But that’s so not the case! Every time I watch one of these incredible videos that I see on Facebook or on videographers blogs, I feel sad we didn’t find a way to make it work. I love, LOVE my wedding images and would NEVER go back and change the decision to hire Jodi and Kurt, however I know there were probably ways we could have cut more “fat” from the budget to afford to hire photographers AND videographers. The first one would be our wedding meal! We had a nice wedding dinner catered by an excellent Williamsburg caterer…loved the meal, loved their service. But if I had it to do all over again we would have had a wedding breakfast, or a cocktail reception, or a dessert reception…being able to show our children and grandchildren a video of us ACTUALLY saying our vows would mean so much more to us in the long run than enjoying Chicken cordon bleu, no matter how delicious!

Also, we did have family members record our wedding ceremony with their camcorders…And you know how people ask family members to do their photography and then later regret it because their family members are not really professionals and things happen to their images (we’ve all heard the horror stories…)? Well…my dad accidentally DELETED the video he took of the wedding and my sister’s boot camp graduation. And the cousin who took video for me never gave it to me! So I have no idea what has happened to that precious footage of our special day! If we had invested in a professional videographer we could trust to take care of our video, it wouldn’t have been a big deal that my dad deleted his.

My point is, though everyone is different and everyone has different wedding day priorities, to me the tangible memories are the most important things because they are the only thing you will have left ( besides your spouse, obvi) after all the cake has been eaten and the sparklers fizzle out. Investing in these two things will NEVER steer you wrong and I doubt there are many (if any) people that will say they wished they hadn’t invested in an amazing photographer and videographer.

To close out this post, here are a couple of my favorite moments from my own wedding (can’t miss an opportunity to show off my wedding). Even though we wish we had put some money aside for videography, we are so grateful to have these images to remember our day by!

Images courtesy of Jodi Miller Photography

 

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  1. Dani says:

    Sometimes, I get a little melancholy thinking I should have had a videographer too. Great post!!

  2. I have the same regret. I wish I could hear our vows, hear my hyperventilation as I walked down the aisle, hear the toasts made to us.

  3. Morgan Leigh says:

    I’m just curious…Have you worked with any videographers you would recommend? We’re getting married in May in OH, and I would love a recommendation! Thanks 🙂

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