When we first started planning our wedding just over a year ago, I said no to a videographer. I never really imagined sitting down to watch our wedding video for the first time, happy tears and huge smiles slapped on both of our faces, because I knew videography was for sure going to fall under the “unnecessary expenses” category, so I never even really considered it while putting together our wedding budget. Having been through the entire planning process full-circle, I can now say with confidence that it’s so easy for wedding expenses to quickly and unexpectedly spiral out of control, and we both agreed very early on that a wedding video would be nice to have, but we didn’t actually need one.
Honestly, both of us are also really, shall we say, ~ particular ~. The average cost of wedding videography is around $2,100, but I can absolutely guarantee you–had I gone down the path of actually searching for our ideal wedding videographer, which I restrained myself from doing because I didn’t even want to be tempted–we would have wanted to spend closer to $4,000-$5,000 to get the right vibe. (I’ll do an issue on budgeting and how much our wedding cost at some point; maybe that’s weird to share but the hidden costs are all kind of wild to me!). My spidey-senses told me at the very beginning that something we planned would go way over budget and we’d have to cut something somewhere–and I was right. Our welcome party ended up costing almost double what I had budgeted for it, and I felt good about being able to shrug and say, “well, that’s why we didn’t hire a videographer, right???” Our welcome party was easy and awesome and I’m glad we did it; truly no regrets there.
So… how do we have an epic wedding video?????? Paul knew it wasn’t “in the budget” from the very beginning, so last summer he came up with a scheme (as he does) to make sure we got a video of our wedding day, which I think he secretly wanted. All I can say is I’ve never been happier to be married to someone who always figures out a way to magically make the damn thing happen.
A friend officiated our wedding, and did an absolutely stellar job. (You’ll see him standing up with us at the ceremony and hear a little part of his speech. Hi David!!). His entire family is unusually talented, and his son, Karu, who is still in high school, was the videographer at our wedding. Karu has been working on his videography business for a few years now (what the hell was I even doing at his age???????) and we have the absolute honor of being the first wedding he’s ever shot, though I’m sure ours won’t be the last. When I say my jaw hit the floor when we watched this video for the first time, I genuinely mean that. I kind of scream-cried; I couldn’t believe a high school kid created something this cool! I had seen some of his other work which I knew was impressive especially considering his age, but I just wasn’t imagining what we got at all.
I’m a perfectionist and kind of hate watching myself on film, so if I had it my way we would continue to edit this video literally forever, but this is Karu’s second (and final) draft of the six minute version of our wedding video, which we absolutely had the budget for. (Also any new subscriptions I get today will pretty much go directly to Karu. He earned it!!). He also made a 45-minute version that’s just for us, which we’re actually saving to watch for a special occasion because there will be a lot of crying!
This video communicates more than thousands of words could ever say. It really encapsulates the vibe and the feeling of our wedding perfectly. And the drone footage?! Come on. Also can’t wait for you to see me twinning with my mom and sister, lol. I hope you enjoy it. 🥹