Wedding Video Disappointment – Please can you help?

If you’re currently planning your wedding or have recently got married you will be very much aware of how much it costs for a wedding videographer. Back in my post about keeping your wedding costs down I wrote about how we found our videographer on Gumtree.

I had originally started discussions with a guy from church about shooting the day. As we knew him and he knew us, we knew he would do a great job; however a few weeks to the wedding he broke his arm, so he wasn’t able to do it.

Then I came across the Gumtree advert. An existing videographer, {let’s call him John} he told me he was looking to move into wedding videos and in return for use of footage on his site when he launched, we would get our wedding shot for free with a 20 min highlight DVD. We had a preliminary meeting and he came across as professional and personable. He was happy to travel up to Birmingham from Manchester and also agreed to give us all the raw footage as well. I was happy with what we agreed and looked forward to seeing him the day.

On the day itself, John was good. He came with quality equipment, was engaging and appeared to be a doing a good job. He also worked well alongside Jide, our photographer and we both looked forward to seeing the final result.

Post wedding we expectantly waited for our wedding video. One month…nothing. Two months…nothing. Three months nothing. After six months of calls, text, emails on Christmas Eve {Who doesn’t believe in Christmas miracles!)} we finally received 6 plain discs, in a brown envelope, inside a padded enveloped. No note, nothing.

So our agreement was that our wedding would be shot with two cameras and we would receive a highlight video. What we received was 6 discs of incomplete, chopped up footage and an incomplete highlight video with no sound, all shot with a single camera, so in the vows for example you only see my face and not Afam’s expressions at all.

To say we were disappointed was an understatement. The footage was shaky, blurry and key bits of the day were missing e.g. cutting the cake, speeches. Okay so we didn’t pay the guy but come on…there was some expectation of what we would receive!

I went back to John and voiced our concerns and disappointment. Firstly about why it took so long for us to receive anything and secondly about why he didn’t deliver what we agreed. His response…we didn’t pay him, he had other things on and it wasn’t a priority. In addition he filmed things what he thought were important. Err so you don’t think speeches are important or cutting the cake is important!

Well we have learned our lesson. It always better to pay, that way you have some sort of come back and you get videos that look like this. Our only saving grace is that we have fantastic photographs - thank you Jide Alakija.

So here’s the thing…we have lots of individual footage but I’m no video editor. I can work my way around Windows Movie Maker but it doesn’t have the capability to do what I need it to do. We have a half finished highlight video which we would like to edit, add scenes and add music.

So I’m putting out a plea to Blogland - if you or anyone you know has good video editing skills and you’re based in the UK {and you would like to make a couple very happy}, please drop me a line. In return for your kind help, I will promote your services here on the blog gratis.

Muchos Gracias!

Image {source}