The end of last year brought the birth of my daughter. To commemorate this, I wanted to finally use the video capabilities of my camera and make a short film. The resulting video is something that my wife and I will cherish for decades to come. This is what lit the fire of wanting to take on more video work and so the long, hard road of learning filmmaking began.

Since that time, I’ve completed a handful of projects but it was that original video that grabbed Tracy’s eye. She contacted me earlier this year about possibly filming her wedding this summer. We had a great meeting together and went over the details of how I would go about this process. She knew going in that I was new to this and yet she put her confidence in me that I would be able to deliver a quality product.

Now I had a date looming over my head that I had to purchase new gear, develop new video-specific shooting techniques, and become proficient in post-production editing and story-telling as it relates to video. That’s a tall order but I knew I was up to the task. Thus began some frustrations in both my part as well as my wife’s as I was filling up the credit cards more than normal.

I filmed and completed several small projects along the way to build my skills and finally the big day came. Although I was nervous going into the day doing something I’ve never done before, it was kind of relaxing as I wasn’t the photographer like I normally am and thus didn’t have to do much directing during the day.

The end edit took quite awhile to finish as it was by far the hardest story-telling piece I’d taken on to that point. In the end, I was very happy with the film and after sending it out to Tracy and Mykel, I received probably the best compliment you can get from a wedding film; Tracy said they both cried while watching it.

I am extremely happy with the final film. I would love to hear any comments you have in the section below. I recently read an article that said the number one thing brides regretted about their wedding was not having or paying for a wedding video. What do you think about this? My beautiful married people out there; do you have a wedding video?