Archive for October, 2008

The day of Sharon and Craig’s wedding was rather wet, as per great British tradition, it just rained pretty much all day long. This however was not going to put a damper on this wedding. Early in the morning I went to film the girls getting ready while Niels went next door where the boys were already in the right party mood! Sharon and Craig’s wedding was going to be a fun one!
Their music choices for their wedding day and video were enough to put you in the right mood: the eighties! As their first dance, they chose Jefferson Starship’s Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now, other music included songs from Dirty Dancing, Madonna and Let’s Hear it for the Boys. Their wedding film may be filled with eighties music but luckily everything else was right up too date, so no poofy sleeves or cumber bands at this wedding! Sharon wore a dazzling sparkly dress, Craig a dashing grey suit with a fuchsia tie while the users wore the same grey suits but with black ties and the bridesmaids had gorgeous black dress with hot pink netting. They all looked stunning! And then there were the flowers: WOW! The flowers were done by a local florist, Passion Flowers, whose work is amazing, we’ve seen their work at several weddings over the years and they have always been very original and creative. This time was no different. The bride’s bouquet was like a piece of art, the bridesmaids’ bouquets were just as beautiful and the reception venue was adorned with striking tall black vases filled with lovely pink flowers and had matching pink bows to match.

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The wedding was at Badsworth Church in West Yorkshire and the reception took place at nearby Waterton Park Hotel.

WOW, what can I say!?! We just had 2 amazing days at the IOV Convention in Coventry.
Niels was on the wedding question time panel first thing on Wednesday morning, an hour and a half of questions to help our fellow videographers. We then had some time to go check out the exhibition, or so we thought. The moment we came out of the question time session, we were grabbed by BBC Radio Coventry for an interview going out live on the breakfast program regarding the MCPS Awards and our Trash the Dress clip. Afterwards we were also asked for another slightly more elaborate interview that would be broadcasted the next morning. Managed to get a quick bite to eat and then  it was time to give our seminar on Key Ingredients to Beautiful Films. The room was packed, people were even standing at the back. We were obviously very pleased with the turn out and from the reactions we received afterwards, it looked liked the attendants really enjoyed it too. After the seminar so many people kept chatting to us about the ideas we had given them. Time to go the Awards reception, met up with some very kind videographers, some of them we already knew from the professional video forums, so it was nice to put a face to the names. The awards ceremony itself had a little hick up, somehow they had managed to forget to bring the awards! Quite funny really! We had entered some of our work in 3 categories: the Musical Marriage Awards, the IOV Open Category and the IOV Best Wedding Day Film. I already knew we were short listed for the 2 latter competitions, so I would at least leave with a ‘highly commended’ award. Well, it turned quite good for us. We were a runner up in the Musical Marriage Award for our Trash the Dress clip, receiving a £100 cheque. In the Open Category, where there were entries from the whole videography industry with big budget productions, we were awarded 2nd place for our Showreel! Quite chuffed with that one. But the best was yet to come with the Best Wedding Day Film category: WE WON 1ST PLACE!!!  It was the first year that we entered any of our work into the awards and to have won 1st place, it was  fabulous! I don’t think I’ve ever been this popular! I also immediately texted a message to Claire and Brian, the stars of the winning wedding video, who very pleasantly surprised (just like me).
Day 2 of the convention, I was still on cloud 9. I was so surprised by the number of people congratulating us, I was so happy! We had to give our seminar again, it was fun to be introduced as the award winner. Yet again, after the seminar we had plenty of people come up to us to thank us for all information and ideas and congratulate us with the award. Niels finally managed to get a quick look around the exhibition and then it was my turn to sit on the question time panel which was actually a lot of fun, not quite as scary as I had imagined. After that we had to head back to home to Sheffield, had a quick take away and fell asleep.
Back to reality now, I have wedding videos to edit!

Quickly sharing another highlights video clip before we our trip to the IOV convention. This is one from a while back now and we’ve already shown the Wedding Day Edit for this wedding, but I still wanted to show their highlights too.

So here we have it, the highlights of Caroline and Mike’s wedding day. This was without doubt a wedding with a bit of a difference. Caroline had designed and made just about everything for their wedding. The bride’s bouquet is crafted out of literally millions of tiny beads, which took her months to make and weighs a ton. She also made bridesmaids’ bouquets, buttonholes and venue decorations with the same amount of dedication, patience and number of beads! She also designed her own dress and expertly decorated her wedding shoes to match. Although she didn’t bake the wedding cake, she did design it. I believe that by now you will take it for granted that she also made all the invitations, menus, orders of service, … It’s a good thing she had 18 months to prepare for this wedding!

The day itself was splendid, the weather behaved most of the time, but even if hadn’t been, the setting was just so amazing that it wouldn’t have mattered. The ceremony took place in the Great Hall at Adlington Hall in Cheshire. This is a stunning venue, steeped in history, dating back to the Doomsday Book. Their wedding breakfast was in the adjacent Hunting Lodge which had been personalised with little touches by Caroline complete with a much appreciated candy bar! We also went to Shrigley Hall Hotel for a short photo session with Rob, the most fabulous photographer known to mankind.

So now, without further ado, I present to you Caroline & Mike’s Highlights.

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Considering we haven’t posted a lot of clips lately, we thought we would make it up to you by sharing a complete wedding video. So this time, not just a little highlight, bridal prep or photo shoot clip, but the full works!
Claire and Iain are the stars of this film. Their wedding was at Whitley Hall, a 16th century mansion just north of Sheffield. The day ran smoothly thanks to help of the on the day coordinator Viv from Essentially You who made sure everything was just as Claire dreamed it would be. Claire’s wedding dress was personalised with pink details on the bodice to match her colour scheme and she was also the lucky owner of a pair of gorgeous Jimmy Choo wedding shoes.
For their video, Claire and Iain decided on our Signature Edit rather than a traditional format video. They chose most of the music and we added a few tracks that we felt would heighten the emotions even more.
They received their DVD last Sunday afternoon and by 7pm I received a text message to say that they had already watched it 4 times! They took it to Claire’s parents, where it had her mum in tears and her dad thought it looked like something from Hollywood. On Monday morning they watched it again as soon as they got up and it was the first thing they did when they stepped in the door from work. I guess I can safely say, they are quite happy with it!

So clear your schedule for the next 27 minutes to watch Claire & Iain’s wedding video.

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