Today is finally the day! After almost 5 months, our wedding video is done. I'll start out by saying that when the time came to make the decision about the videography, I was really really lost. I was a few weeks away (short notice, I know!) so the idea of shelling out even more money didn't seem like a very fun idea. I did a bit of surveying and everyone that spent a lot on their wedding video said it wasn't really worth it. I wasn't getting a feeling that it was a must-have item.

When the wedding was over, the only thing I wanted to do is look at video coverage of the day. Pictures worked, but I wanted to see everyone, hear the speeches and just watch it all over again and again. That was the big reason that I decided video is very important. Ya maybe I won't watch it ALL the time, but at least I have it to watch again and again, show kids, etc.

So I went the craigslist route. I paid a few hundred dollars for a guy to shoot it, and I paid to get it edited. Luckily for me I have a friend, Matt Cross, who is an incredible editor because most videographers won't even touch footage they didn't shoot themselves. And I can see why. The footage we had to work with from the shooter was, well.....not good. Literally you could easily throw away so much of it that you wouldn't be able to actually put together a video.

Matt took the footage and worked it like crazy. You can tell he is really passionate about having a great product even when that is really hard to do. Baring in mind the coverage we had, he created this 7 minute video of our wedding.

So the lessons for today are two-fold. 1 hiring a wedding videography is more important than you might think. Anything is better than nothing. Second, if you have an incredibly professional videographer, the product will turn out amazing no matter what (although I would never recommend going my route with the super cheap craigslister. That just wasn't worth it!)

And just in case you missed this: here is Ian's wedding speech.