Weddings, Wedding Planner, Top 10 Wedding Venues, Wedding Dresses, Wedding Jewellery, Photography
November 16, 2010
A wedding ceremony involves more than simply marrying the person you love. The perfect wedding is an elegant ballet of order and chaos, and items such as wedding favours, wedding hairstyles, and wedding music must be kept in perfect order, or the entire wedding can be thrown off-kilter. Whether the bride is an environmentalist seeking a purely green wedding, or a society doyenne who must have simply the best of everything, the fact remains that planning a wedding can require help. The wedding flowers, wedding accessories, as well as the wedding invitations and the wedding ceremony itself, must all be to the couple’s liking; otherwise, they won’t enjoy themselves as much as possible. Some people enjoy a beach wedding, while others prefer a fall wedding. The fact remains that there are hotels that specialise in handling weddings and taking as much of the stress away from the wedding party as possible. Hotels that handle hundreds of such weddings annually are very good at ensuring that every aspect of the wedding is perfect, from the wedding centrepiece to the wedding announcements. They will bring in clergy to handle the wedding readings, and they’ll even hire the wedding band. The wedding bouquets are often prepared on site, and they’ll even have their staff work with the wedding party on their wedding vows. These hotels typically have wedding chapels on site, and they often have a wedding DJ or wedding band on retainer to provide the music. These groups, of course, know the wedding march, as well as a number of wedding waltz options. Regardless of the wedding song that the couple wants, the band can typically arrange it. First dance lessons are available for those who need them, and these destination wedding resorts often have a full time wedding planner. These resorts that handle a typical destination wedding even have a wide selection of wedding card options, and many of them are in warm destinations for those couples who want a winter wedding. They’ll assign staff to man the wedding book and ensure that guests make a record that they were at the wedding, and the wedding dress and wedding veils are stored to prevent damage.
There are a few destination wedding resorts that are wildly popular with UK residents, and they handle the entire wedding from start to finish. The Marriott hotels across the UK and Ireland can handle weddings of any size, and it all starts with the planning. Representatives from the resort will meet with the wedding party to determine the size of the wedding, and they’ll work out seating arrangements for both the rehearsal dinner and the post wedding reception. The Marriott hotel has a staff that will create menus that the guests will enjoy, and the qualified culinary staff at the hotel will go out of their way to prepare the best dishes for wedding guests. Menu tastings are provided, including samples of the various wedding cakes that the staff offers. The Marriott staff can offer ceremonies that satisfy most major religions, and certainly include same-sex ceremonies, as well. A honeymoon suite is provided for the bride and groom, and honeymoon packages can be booked at more than 2,500 resorts worldwide. A destination wedding can be arranged through Marriott even if the wedding party doesn’t want to use their local Marriott for the ceremony. The staff at the Marriott can handle any special requests, as well, including kosher menus and menus that satisfy most other major religious requirements. Wedding packages may include a champagne brunch, as well as a lunch buffet or a formal dinner. Regardless of the type of dining preferred, guests are guaranteed to enjoy the food and the atmosphere, and it frees up the wedding party and family to socialize with their guests.
Of course, there are other destination resorts that are popular with UK and Ireland residents, and perhaps the most popular of them all is the Hotel Phoenicia, on Malta. Formerly the Le Meridien, the Hotel Phoenicia is one of the most luxurious of all the hotels in Europe. The staff at the Phoenicia will spend weeks working with a wedding party to ensure that every aspect of the wedding is absolutely perfect. The hotel will fly in staff, if requested, in order to provide the best service possible. The Phoenicia can handle weddings of nearly any size, since the sprawling grounds are perfect for holding an outdoor wedding. The culinary staff at the hotel isn’t afraid to take requests, and they’ll go out of their way to ensure that special dietary requirements or requests are met with style and flair. The Hotel Phoenicia also offers rehearsal dinner services and brunch for guests of the wedding party, and blocks of rooms can be reserved so the guests can be close to one another.
Wedding Videography in the Digital Age
November 10, 2010
What’s the state of the wedding videography industry today? To find out, we talked with working wedding videographers, found industry statistics and fleshed out what is undoubtedly a flourishing business in a growing market. Although some might wonder if amateurs are moving in on the pros because of lower-cost gear and easier-to-use software, our consensus of wedding shooters and editors say that isn’t so. We also took a look at the tools wedding videographers are using, and found out how the best wedding videographers are using the Web to open up new avenues of business for their bustling enterprises.
To get an idea of the size of the wedding videography market, first let’s take a look at statistics that reveal the enormous amount of money spent on weddings in the United States. According to the American Wedding Study by Conde Nast’s Bridal Infobank, in the last ten years spending on an average wedding has exploded by 50%, to an average of ,360 per wedding this year, up from ,208 in 1994. And, according to Richard Markel, President of the Association for Wedding Professionals International, of the billion spent on weddings each year, “6% of the budget would be for video.” Markel added, “But using the 6% of the estimated billion spent will equate out to 0 million.” This signals a wide-open market for wedding videography professionals. Markel continued, “We just had a show here in Sacramento and several of our videographers booked business with an average ticket price of ,500.”
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Looking at those stats, wedding videography appears to be a growth industry. Let’s do the math for a moment. Consider an experienced videographer , charging 00 for an average wedding, shooting one wedding per week. In a year, that person has earned 0,000. But that would be a very hard-working videographer — most of the videographers we talked to said they spent up to 40 hours editing each wedding video, meaning a weekly shoot would constitute nearly-constant travail with hardly any time off.
One great success story would be that of high-end videographer Kris Malandruccolo, whose company Elegant Videos by Kris has been operating in the Chicago area for the past 16 years. Her business can command as much as 00 for a wedding video package, and regularly signs contracts for 00 weddings. But the mother of three doesn’t want to work all the time, so she limits herself. “Someone else could shoot four or five per month. But I average two or three weddings a month,” she told Digital Media Net.
According to Luisa Winters, an award-winning videographer and editor who has her own wedding videography business, Unforgettable Events, most wedding videographers charge under 00 for their services — with higher-end wedding video companies charging as much as ,000-,000. “I do not consider anyone a true professional unless they are able to make enough money to support themselves with this business,” Winters told Digital Media Net. “Anything else is a side business. Supporting a family means different things depending on what part of the country you are located. If you are in a less expensive location, then less income will suffice — and you are still professional,” Winters added.
At prices of 00-00 and up, it seems like amateurs would be interested in shooting their own wedding videos, or getting a friend or relative to take the controls of the family camcorder . But Internet message boards for wedding videographers are rife with stories of first-time videographers shooting an entire wedding ceremony with the camcorder on pause, only to find they began rolling after all was said and done, ending up with lots of artistic shots of the floor and nothing else. According to videographer /editor Luisa Winters, “The amateurs are taking a bite out of the wedding videographer business, but that is true only for the lower-end videographers.” She thinks the lower-end shooters make things better for the higher end, increasing the quality gap between the two. “More-educated brides will expect to pay a lot more for a video that looks professional than they were willing to pay before the advent of such inexpensive equipment. The difference between an amateur wedding video and a professional one is huge, and people are willing to pay Top Dollar for the latter.” Sometimes quality considerations can be quite basic, such as, can you hear what the bride and groom are saying? “You really have to worry about the audio part of it, you know. There’s a lot involved,” said Kris Malandruccolo, who in addition to being a successful wedding videographer is president of the Illinois Videographers Association.
Is the playing field being leveled by the profusion of low-cost, high quality equipment? According to Winters, “The quality of image and editing capabilities has become less important to the fact that now you have to be a better storyteller, you have to be a better artist… after all, we all have access to pen and paper, but we cannot all write the great American novel, right? Shakespeare and Mozart only had pen and paper to work with, and yet they gave us masterpieces that transcend time. Not all is determined by equipment.”
Then there’s the editing, which is a process many newlyweds aren’t equipped to handle. “As you know, anyone in the business who edits knows it’s a time-consuming process,” said Malandruccolo. “I take tons of family videos but none of my personal stuff is edited, because there’s no time. So if I wasn’t getting paid, then I would not be editing, because it’s so time-consuming, especially if you don’t do it all the time. I think a lot of people, especially if they have the money, just want to say ‘do it for me.’” Malandruccolo added that it’s not just the time element that is a barrier to entry, but it’s the professionalism required to create a polished production. “The end result is that you have a better quality video. Like I emphasize to my clients, this is a family heirloom. You only get one shot to do it right, and you can’t do it over, so being that this is a family heirloom, if you look at it that way, then they’re willing to invest the money into it. And I’ve never had a client say that they’re sorry that they spent the money on video. Clients just don’t say that,” added Malandruccolo.
Wedding videography has changed significantly over the past 20 years, where digital video shooting and editing has brought highly sophisticated techniques to a type of video production that was once quite basic. In those days it was typical to spend about 00 on a video that was a simple, point-and-shoot production, with all the editing taking place in the camera . But now, with the power of digital technology, videographers are taking advantage of 3-chip DV camcorders and sophisticated editing setups, resulting in extraordinary productions, many of which are true works of art.
For the shooting tasks, most wedding videographers use DV camcorders in the league of the Sony PD150 or VX 2000, Canon XL1 and GL2, or Panasonic 3-chip camcorders such as the AG-DVX100. Said Winters, “Most wedding videographers will use DV for acquisition (3-CCD), which is logical, because the cost is low, the quality is high, and above all, the weight of the camcorder is so low now, that videographers are able to be more creative with the smaller units than they were able to be, say, five or six years ago, when the cameras where huge. No longer do you have to have a big professional-looking camcorder to get good money videotaping weddings. In fact, many clients prefer the smaller units over the bigger ones, because they are less obtrusive.”
Another staple of wedding coverage are wireless microphones, usually attached to the groom and strategically placed elsewhere, assuring that the most important words many people will ever speak will be clearly heard on the final product.
The biggest technological leap has been in editing, where even unsophisticated computers can create presentations that would have been possible only in a multi-million dollar edit suite 20 years ago. Apple Final Cut Pro is the most popular Mac application for editing, with Adobe Premiere Pro 1.5 leading the pack on the Windows side. Other wedding videographers use Sony Vegas, Pinnacle Liquid Edition , Avid Xpress , NewTek Video Toaster, Canopus Edius and others. Some videographers opt for real-time DV acceleration cards such as the RT.X100 from Matrox or the DVStorm2 from Canopus . One constant is obvious throughout the equipment decision arena — people are staunchly devoted to the choices they’ve made. Winters said, “They’re loyal, from fierce arguments about the superiority of an operating system or capture card to the inferiority of the competing product. My personal opinion is less partisan. To me an editing system is a tool and nothing more — whatever works and makes me money is what I will use — and in this case I have chosen Premiere Pro 1.5 and a Matrox RT.X100 capture card. I have both the real time card from Matrox and plain generic FireWire cards.”
Another popular technique of today’s wedding videography is multicamera production. At its most rudimentary level, a videographer will operate one camcorder while a second unmanned camcorder is set up on a tripod, taping the event from a different angle. For the reception, most of the time a single camcorder does all the shooting, with the other used as a backup. At its most sophisticated, a multicamera setup works in much the same way a network remote production would be configured, with multiple cameras attached to a switcher located in a separate room outside the venue. A director is in constant contact with each of the three, four or more camera operators via headsets, coordinating their shots while switching live between cameras while rolling tape in each camera for isolated