From my friend Earl Chesser in California, compelling information you may not have realized…Thousands of brides every year say they regret not including video in their pre-wedding planning. Now, after the wedding, it’s too late.

According to many members of the professional wedding and event video production community this reaction has been their collective experience when talking with these brides. “Our company is always marketing through direct mail, client referral programs, participating in area bridal fairs and other events,” says Mary Ann Osness of CorElAnn Productions in Southern California. “We get to speak with many newly wedded brides as a result and the vast majority of them tell us they regret not having a video of their wedding day.” Osness says that a good number among this group admit they got portions of their wedding day on video, taken by friends or family.

“They will tell me it’s a good thing to have some of their wedding videotaped, but that often the things they wanted to see the most were not recorded, or that they could not hear the vows, readers or other special commentary due to bad audio,” says Osness.

Our experience here at McKnight Video has been exactly the same. Recently….

From my friend Earl Chesser in California, compelling information you may not have realized…Thousands of brides every year say they regret not including video in their pre-wedding planning. Now, after the wedding, it’s too late.

According to many members of the professional wedding and event video production community this reaction has been their collective experience when talking with these brides. “Our company is always marketing through direct mail, client referral programs, participating in area bridal fairs and other events,” says Mary Ann Osness of CorElAnn Productions in Southern California. “We get to speak with many newly wedded brides as a result and the vast majority of them tell us they regret not having a video of their wedding day.” Osness says that a good number among this group admit they got portions of their wedding day on video, taken by friends or family.

“They will tell me it’s a good thing to have some of their wedding videotaped, but that often the things they wanted to see the most were not recorded, or that they could not hear the vows, readers or other special commentary due to bad audio,” says Osness.

Our experience here at McKnight Video has been exactly the same. Recently we delivered a finished video and the mother of the bride called us, crying, because she loved the video but was now kicking herself for not “buying more video”, and having us at the rehearsal dinner and other events surrounding the wedding. She had opted for very minimal coverage of the day. Her exact words were, “If I had only known…”

But at least she has a professional video of the wedding day itself. Osness continues: “I read post after post on wedding web sites where brides say how disappointed they are now that their day is over and they have no video. These brides are the very ones who, posting before their wedding, strongly advocated the lack of need for video.” On posts prior to their wedding day, according to Osness, these brides claim photography is enough. Or maybe their Wedding Consultant “recommended” that they drop the video. How short sighted.

“A bride told me recently that she loved her photographs, wouldn’t give them up at any price,” says Osness, “but she added that, now that it’s too late, she would gladly spend the same or more to have had a wedding video.”

At McKnight Video, it is sometimes frustrating to get brides to realize and address the need for video before they realize and regret the absense of it. An informal poll of Houston-area videographers echoed the sentiment loud and clear.

“Yes, there are thousands of us who produce professional wedding and event video product,” says Osness. “We do have a personal interest in this. But so does the bride. When so many of them tell us how they wish they had realized the importance of video and are now sorry they didn’t, that’s saying we as professionals somehow need to reach them.”

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