The People Are Why Weddings Feel Different
WHY I STILL FILM WEDDINGS — PART THREE
There is another reason I keep filming weddings that really doesn’t have much to do with cameras.
It is the people.
Day-to-day life can be strangely isolating.
We pass people in stores without looking at them. We get into elevators and stare at our phones. We walk through parking lots trying not to make eye contact.
Most of us spend a surprising amount of our lives politely avoiding one another.
Weddings feel completely different.
For one day, everybody is there because they want to be together.
People are happy to see each other.
They hug.
They laugh.
They tell old stories.
Cousins who haven’t seen each other in years pick up where they left off. Friends who live in different states end up around the same table. Grandparents sit and watch generations of their family in one room.
It feels less like being at an event and more like being invited into a giant family gathering.
“For one day, everybody is there because they want to be together.”
Even though I am working, I get to live inside that for the day.
I talk with parents.
I joke with the wedding party.
I meet grandparents.
Guests ask what I’m doing.
Somebody always wants to know what camera I’m using.
And because I spend so much of the day watching people instead of just watching events, I start noticing the relationships pretty quickly.
Who is trying not to cry.
Who keeps checking on the bride.
Who can make the groom laugh when he is nervous.
Who everybody in the family turns to.
Those little relationships are usually where the real story is.
By the end of the night, there are people who were strangers to me that morning who are saying goodbye like we spent the day together.
Because we did.
Then there are the other wedding professionals.
That is its own thing.
A wedding brings together a strange collection of independent businesses that suddenly have to operate like one company.
The planner has a job to do.
The photographer has a job to do.
The videographer has a job to do.
The DJ has a job to do.
The venue staff, caterer, florist, officiant, hair and makeup team and everyone else all have their own responsibilities.
On paper, we are separate companies.
But the good wedding professionals understand very quickly that nobody can make the day great by themselves.
Sometimes helping the couple means giving another vendor thirty seconds to finish what they need.
Sometimes the photographer gives me a moment I need.
Sometimes I move so they can get theirs.
A planner buys us a few minutes.
A DJ helps us get clean audio.
Venue staff opens a door we need.
Somebody quietly lets us know dinner is about to start earlier than expected.
There is a camaraderie in that environment that I don’t experience in most traditional workplaces.
Something goes wrong and sometimes there is just a look between a few of us.
Nobody has to say much.
Everybody knows.
Okay.
Here we go.
Let’s fix it.
Those relationships build over time.
You start seeing the same people at different weddings.
You learn how they work.
You know which photographers are going to communicate with you.
You know the coordinators who somehow stay calm no matter what is happening.
You know the DJs who understand that the video team needs audio too.
And after enough weddings, some of those people become friends.
“For that one day, we become a team.”
And in my case, a large percentage of my weddings now come from referrals.
That creates another kind of connection I never really expected when I started doing this.
I see past couples all the time.
I might be filming a wedding and suddenly recognize someone across the room.
I filmed their wedding three years ago.
Or five years ago.
Sometimes I recognize them immediately and they need a second to remember me.
I’ve learned not to take that personally.
Actually, it is probably exactly what I was trying to accomplish.
I spent their wedding trying to stay out of the way.
I am not in their wedding film.
I am not standing beside them in their wedding photographs.
I was intentionally trying not to become part of their memory of the day.
But they become part of mine.
After the wedding, I spend hours with these people.
I hear their vows over and over.
I listen to their parents.
I watch their friends.
I study their faces while I edit.
Their wedding becomes familiar to me in a way they could never really understand because they don’t have the same frame of reference.
Sometimes I see a former bride or groom years later and instantly remember things about their day.
The church.
The reception.
Something their dad said.
The song I used.
A moment that gave me trouble in the edit.
A shot that I loved.
They probably just remember me as the guy with the cameras.
And that is okay.
What I love is watching all of these weddings start connecting to one another.
One couple refers another.
Then I see the first couple at the second wedding.
A bridesmaid becomes a bride.
A groomsman calls a few years later.
Families cross paths.
Wedding professionals cross paths.
I start recognizing people in the room.
After enough years, it stops feeling like I am filming a bunch of unrelated weddings.
It starts feeling like I am documenting pieces of a community.
“I try very hard to be invisible in their memories.
What I didn’t expect was how visible all of them would become in mine.”
And I think that is another reason I keep doing this.
These stories are theirs.
But after spending so much time with them, a little piece of every one of them becomes part of my story too.
The couples.
Their families.
The people standing beside them.
The vendors working quietly in the background.
For one day, all of these people come together around something that matters.
Then everybody goes back to their own lives.
But I get to carry a little bit of that day with me.
Maybe that is why weddings never really start feeling routine.
Even after all these years, they still feel personal.
Why I Still Shoot Weddings
This is the third in a four-part series about what keeps pulling me back to wedding filmmaking after all these years.
