Having a video of your wedding and wedding day events is something that you can enjoy for many years. And think about it as something that you can pass down to future generations. How neat would it be to have a video your parents or grandparents wedding? Of course, up until recent years it was impossible to have a wedding videotaped unless you had a local TV station come out! Now powerful video equipment comes in small packages and you can have a high quality video made your wedding without the cameras being a distraction during your wedding.
You actually have several options to consider. One is that you let your uncle Bill videotape the wedding with his new video camera. That may be fine and all you need. It is better than nothing. Except that uncle Bill may not be very professional. Maybe he video tapes stuff you really don’t want, or he gets a relative saying unsavory things. And he may spend more time videotaping his cute son than he does you, the bride and groom.
Another option is to have a semi-professional to video tape your wedding. This is someone who has some quality equipment and some experience using it. They understand some of the lighting issues and how to deal with them. They may have a remote microphone which will record the audio of the wedding ceremony much, much better than an on-camera mic. I know a little bit about this because my son used to do this. He just shot the wedding, recorded it onto a DVD and sent it to the couple. There was no editing done and so the cost was minimal. For a lot of couples this perfect since they wanted to have a basic video of their wedding but did not want to spend thousands of dollars.
A third option is the hire a full-fledge professional videographer. They have top of the line equipment and usually years of experience. This of course costs the most and some are a bit shocked at how much. But you have to remember that they have many thousands of dollars invested in equipment and have to upgrade it from time to time. Plus, they spend many more hours in editing than they actually do in videotaping your wedding. And what you wind up with, if they have done their job well, is a very impressive wedding video. Some do a more linear type video but more and more wedding videographers are doing video movies that tell a story. Believe it or not, if you just watch your wedding from start to finish, you will get bored. A video story goes in and out on different parts of your wedding day telling your story as it goes. This makes the video much more interesting to watch.