Why don’t we gush?

At a recent wedding fair I was asked why our blog is so unlike other companies’ blogs.

It’s true, we don’t spend time telling you “what a wonderful wedding we recorded last week, how the bride looked stunning and the event was simply heaven to be at” – all that gushing, celebrity mag sort of thing.

There are two reasons why we’re different. First, regardless of where they’d come in the airbrushed celebrity mags, every one of our brides looks simply stunning on the day. Secondly, making sure the event’s a success is part of our job, along with all the other suppliers. In reality that means making sure that any little problems that arise aren’t noticed by the bride and groom and are never allowed to become big problems.

In fact, that part of our job starts almost as soon as the girl slips on her engagement ring for the first time. Every decision the couple make about their wedding has the propensity to become a disaster because unfortunately the wedding business has as many sharks and conmen as the plumbing trade.

Here’s a few we’ve encountered personally.

Dress shops that sell the bride a wedding dress which patently doesn’t fit; menswear hire companies which send out suits without buttons; wedding cars that break down because they’ve not been serviced; church organists who play as if they’ve seventeen fingers on each hand; hotels which discount the price of the food for the wedding breakfast but double the bar prices to compensate; photographers who behave as if the church is a studio not a place of worship and think the entire day’s a photo shoot; DJs who insist on playing every record at full volume; and video cameramen who simply don’t know their craft or the art and skill of making television programmes.

How does the bridal couple avoid these pitfalls? Mainly by checking out the truth of every claim or statement that’s made. Most important is to ignore testimonials supposedly from other couples - “Thanks for a great DVD, you’re a star – Jason and Lynn” – even if Jason and Lynn are actually real people and not figments of the video producer’s imagination, would their message be printed if it wasn’t complimentary? When did you last see a testimonial which said, “My bouquet fell apart before I reached the church but the flowers on the altar were OK. I’d certainly recommend ABC florists etc”?

And finally, don’t rely on what other couples tell you. Referrals are supposed to be the best recommendations but in reality they’re only as good as the other couple’s taste and judgement. Some people like McDonalds, others Burger King, and still others detest all hamburgers. Whose advice should you take?

It’s the same with wedding suppliers, check out exactly what you’re buying – which is the message underlying most of the articles you’ll read in this blog. Caveat emptor – let the buyer beware – is always the best advice we ever give.

And people actually pay for this…..

Like us, the cameramen and women who record your wedding video, your photographer is with you for most of your wedding day. Some excellent wedding photographers like John Brandwood and Daniel Killoran, share our view – that our job is to record your happy day – and then to let you enjoy it as well. That means getting our work done then leaving you to spend as much of the day as possible with your family and friends.

Sadly, it isn’t how all photographers work – as this honest description of one of our recent weddings shows.

First the photographer spends over three hours snapping the bride’s preparation. When we arrive at 10.30am (early because of prudence regarding the traffic) the bride is ready to roll for her 1pm wedding. All she has to do is put her dress on. The photographer arrived an hour before us and is now working his way through every leaf of her bouquet and then the bridesmaids. The church is 12 minutes away so we have enough time to shoot our prep section, do the bride interview and enjoy a coffee and a scone at a garden centre on the way.

Despite her commendable preparation and organisation the bride arrives at the church at 1.10pm.

At 1.40pm the pastor (who is wearing our radio mic) is recorded saying to the photographer, “if you don’t stop taking photos right now, there will be no wedding. No, not one more.”

At 2.10pm the wedding party leaves the church. It is raining, not lightly – this is July in Manchester, come on. The photographer begins to work his way through several A5 sheets of formals shots – in the deluge. The ladies’ hair-do’s are collapsing; the dresses are becoming more transparent as they soak up the rain like sheets of Plenty; the stretched Hummer’s engine is overheating; the biodegradable confetti is biodegrading in the guests’ hands; the pastor has locked the church and gone home to his lunch and most of the guests are wishing they’d gone with him.

At 2.30pm the wedding car arrives at the hotel – where weddings are exquisitely run by the most charming yet organised wedding co-ordinator in the land. The rain ceases and the sun comes out. The wedding guests, who’ve retreated to the cocktail bar are summoned by the photographer to the lawn, still sparklingly drenched by the previous morning’s rain. Only those who are reeling from paying £4 a pint for the local brew or £3.50 for a small cup of coffee are at all happy. (When coffee costs more than Starbucks you know you’re being screwed.)

The hotel’s Wedding Organiser puts back the time for the guests to enter the breakfast room to 4.15pm. She knows this photographer.

At 4.05pm the photographer accedes to the wedding party’s demand to stop posing them in the most ludicrous and unlikely set-ups ever devised by man or Nijinsky and allows them to meet their guests. If you thought the top hat-throw or the ushers line-run was corny you ain’t seen this photographer’s “Jazz-it-up” pose – he even gives them names! That consists of B&G and a dozen attendants crouching down whilst looking up with arms outstretched à la Al Jolson snapped from a hotel dining chair which is sinking into the sodden lawn even as he clicks. This is not a photographer but a failed designer of synchronised swimming routines in which the swimmers routinely drowned. At the front door to the hotel, the waiter who’s been standing rock-steady ready with glasses of Buck’s Fizz on a silver salver for the bride and groom since 1.45pm presents his cocktails and begins to relieve the rigor mortis into which his elbow has set.

The speeches precede the breakfast. We have our three cameras in two positions, advised to the photographer in writing days before the wedding. Is it beyond the whit of any photographic college student to devise other positions or angles around the room from which to snap people talking? Not this one.

During the speeches we discover that for all his loud-mouth bragging about his £1600 lenses to the bride’s step-father who’s had the temerity to bring his Nikon D3s along to snap the girl, the photographer has no idea how wide the zoom lens of our cameras are and insists on standing in one side of our safety shot frame despite repeated requests not to. When he does move it’s to the front of our third camera sited to record the guests’ reactions. His rationale appears to be if the video people have taken those positions then those must be “the ones”. I suppose we should be flattered that the photographer thinks we’ve chosen the top two places but we aren’t. One is left with the distinct impression that the photographer spends his evenings devising ever-more extreme and unlikely poses and “creative situations” as if his only USP (marketing-speak for difference) is how bizarre he can make his clients look.

The evening reception includes several dozen more guests – whose first thought is to find out which salon did the bridesmaids’ hair and remember not to go there.

They are treated to a lavish event including white and milk chocolate fountains, a beautiful ice sculpture to hold the seating plan and a spectacular champagne luge carved from a piece of glacier you last saw falling off the Antarctic ice shelf into the Ross Sea.

And where are their hosts, the new Mr and Mrs? Oh they’re being creatively snapped by the photographer, whilst illuminated by his “several thousand pounds worth” of flashgun and the moonlight glancing off the raindrops on the still-soaking greensward.

So what conclusions can you draw from this example? Firstly that whilst this guy’s not alone, there are some very excellent wedding photographers around. Secondly, price is not a perfect guide – this example is not a £250 all in con-man but a high priced wedding photography business. Perhaps the best advice is not to rely on the pictures (they’ll never show you bad ones) or testimonials (when did you last see a bad testimonial?) but to visit some wedding fairs and meet them face to face. Make sure you’re meeting the photographer himself and that he’ll be doing the job himself on the day. Most important of all, trust your instinct. This person’s probably going to be around most of the day so it’s important you choose someone you feel you can get on with.

Get me to the church – if you can afford it

It’s reported today that the Church of England is raising its prices for weddings, not by the rate of inflation or the RPI but by 100%. In fairness it is also incorporating some of the extras which, like cheap seats on Ryanair, couples often found themselves paying for on top of the basic price, but it’s still a whacking increase.

It’s hard to understand the logic. At a time when fewer and fewer people are getting married and fewer and fewer of those are getting married in church, raising the price seems a strange path to take.

However, what the Church isn’t saying is that in return for the increased fees couples will pay they will definitely be able to have a photos and a video recorded of their ceremony. It appears that that decision will still remain up to the Vicar or the Parochial Church Council.

Of course everybody knows some horror stories about the ways cameramen behave and we’ve seen some asked to leave the church – and quite rightly – because they’re destroying the dignity and solemnity of the occasion. But those tend to be the cheap hobbyists or amateurs; we’ve yet to see a pro behave in anything but a professional manner.

Every professional cameraman, still or video, expects to keep still and silent during the service, but providing they do, it behooves the Vicar or PCC to recognise that, in return for their quite substantial fee, they should at least make it possible for the pros to work.

After all, every day there are more and more alternative venues licenced for weddings.

I personally find the church an uplifting place for the ceremony – especially if compared to a hotel conference suite which it’s difficult to disguise as anything else – but if the Church of England wants to encourage couples to marry in church someone needs to look at their marketing decisions.

Venue advice

We all know things are difficult economically but that doesn’t seem to me to justify some of the corporate greed that’s cropping up.

One of the nearby quality local hotels, part of a well-known chain has signed up with a company to instal TV screens in its leisure club and this company is selling advertising space on these screens. Note that there is no sound on the screens.

The hotel already has screens in the main hotel area – another supplier and another contract – currently up for re-negotiation I’m told.

It also has a preferred supplier list which includes wedding suppliers.

And twice a year it has a wedding fair organised (for a fee) by a company that also publishes a wedding magazine.

That’s four potential revenue streams, all promoting the single resource behind them all – the hotel. And what is the real value advertisers are getting?

Only two of the six TV screens in the leisure club are a decent size (46″) – the reminder are 26″ and located in the changing rooms – though just what value there is in silent advertising to people getting showered and changed is beyond me.

The hotel declines to hold or distribute the advertising material of any supplier – “too much trouble” – and the only way to get a stand (£250 for 4 hours) at the wedding fair is to take print advertising with the magazine.

Now I’m a committed free market person but all this one-sided promotion stands in contrast to the hotel’s reported desire to attract a “better class of wedding”.

Happily this isn’t a universal situation.

I know of two reputable hotels in our area, one part of a national chain, the other independent, which are taking the economic situation head on – in conjunction with suppliers, not subsidised by them. Rates for supplier participation at their events have been lowered, not raised and suppliers invited on the basis of their reputation and track record with the hotel, not merely their ability to pay.

Good reputations are the toughest things to gain and the easiest to lose. If you’re looking for a venue for a wedding, don’t rely on the name alone when drawing up your list of possibles – visit as many as you can yourself and make up your own mind.

The Perfect Venue

No-one believes Fawlty Towers really exists, but, like many wedding professionals I know far too many wedding venue hotels which come very close.

The problem is that, unlike Fawlty Towers, these hotels will often have one key redeeming feature and brides, unable to get this single overwhelming feature out of their mind, bend or ignore all other considerations to ensure they have this venue for their big day.

The problem is that the disadvantages the brides have managed to minimise, or block out of their minds altogether are the features that will come back to haunt them come the wedding day.

Although couples might not use these terms, there’s a theatre about a wedding, especially the ceremony which is one reason why churches, with their towering ceilings, immense columns and rich echoes are still chosen by couples who aren’t otherwise especially religious.

Creating that sense of theatre in a hotel room that was a training room until Friday evening and will be a conference venue first thing on Monday morning isn’t easy. Standard hotel ceiling heights and bland decorations suitable for everyone and ideal for none simply don’t inspire the mood. Some of the drawbacks of a less-than-ideal venue can be overcome – at a cost, but others will remain to spoil your day no matter what.

So what are some of these problems and what’s the solution?

First and after years of experience, my rule of thumb would be to reduce the maximum capacity the hotel says their room accommodates by 20%. Hotels aren’t just there to meet your needs; they’re there to make as much money as possible and the two objectives aren’t always the same.

And the reason for recommending this reduction isn’t just to preserve the “theatre” of the event. The other resources of the hotel will match the realistic numbers of guests it can handle at one time. Exceed the recommended number and the car park may overflow; invite more guests than the recommended number and the kitchens may not be able to cope and so on.

So how can you avoid this scenario? Here’s some simple steps:

1 Ignore the hotel’s estimate of the maximum capacity of the rooms. Even if they’re accurate, they don’t allow for any space for the theatre of the wedding. We recorded a wedding at a very well-known venue in Hampshire. The space was so limited the bride’s beautiful and expensive dress was draped over her father’s knees and at the end of the ceremony she and her new husband left the room in single file. For a perfect day reduce the capacity by 20%.

2 Don’t rely on the hotel to tell you truth. Within limits they will do anything to encourage you to book your wedding with them. If the quoted maximum for a sit-down meal is 100 not only will that already be a squeeze, but, if you press them hard enough, they’ll probably stretch to 120. Happy? You might think you are but in reality you’ll find all the other facilities will be geared to a maximum of 100 guests; the car park, the toilets, the bar and, most importantly, the kitchens. If any or all of those are important to you, think carefully.

3 Now let’s imagine that your dream hotel has none of these disadvantages – and they do exist – how about your elderly relatives? A country house hotel with only nine rooms isn’t obliged to provide a lift so if your aged granny is in a wheelchair ……

In contrast a modern hotel will meet every need for the disabled, there’ll be stacks of parking, the bars (an important profit centre) will almost certainly be huge so there’ll be no question of waiting for a drink and their kitchens will probably be large enough to cope with perhaps two simultaneous conferences. So is your “dream” venue the right place to choose? I can’t answer that but what I can assure you is that finding a venue that honestly ticks all the boxes will be a miracle so be prepared to accept some compromises and you won’t be disappointed.

The Royal Wedding – the missing person

What a magnificent wedding! The marriage of William and Kate will be an example for couples planning their weddings for a long time, but I wonder how many noticed the missing person? The photographer.

No cameraman walked backwards down the aisle in front of the couple as they left the Abbey, nor even as the bride arrived with her father; no cameraman wandered around during the service or stood on the pews to get his shot. It was a great example of a 21st century wedding with most of it captured by unseen television cameras and tiny radio microphones – and the same philosophy and techniques are available to you for your wedding.

Of course, millions of still frames were photographed from distance using telephoto lenses and Hugo Burnand, the official photographer, had a specific (and reportedly short) time for the formal photographs, but how refreshing it was to see a wedding which wasn’t organised like a “Hello” or “OK” photoshoot.

The combination of three-camera video and formal photographs is now an established package at PHP Weddings. By collaborating with the noted stills photographer, John Brandwood, we are able to offer our clients the ideal 21st century wedding solution – High Definition recording, a total of five Blu-ray and DVD videos and three albums of still photographs plus all the extras including honeymoon video camera, DVD invitations, digital photo frame etc. Top value and best quality.

All that glisters ….

That Shakespeare knew a thing or two even if he didn’t realise that the word glister would become glitter and thereafter he would invariably be misquoted.

Making less worthy things glisten more than they justify has become the advertising man’s forté. Take for instance HD or High Definition. By reducing the term to mere shorthand, today it can legally be applied to cameras costing from £250 to £50,000 or more, yet the results delivered by the two extremes are so far apart as to remove any meaning from the term HD entirely.

Indeed when potential clients tell us their friends “HD wedding video on a Blu-ray disk” didn’t look any different from some of the weddings they’d seen on DVD, we have to resist a technical explanation that will send them to sleep faster than Horlicks – and mean about as much also!

The same goes for “Broadcast” grade. There was a time when all television equipment in the UK did conform to a standard, largely set by the BBC and ITA, which ensured that most television programmes met a certain quality standard. But satellite broadcasting’s insatiable appetite for something to broadcast in between the adverts, and the willingness of mid-western police departments to sell the outdated VHS tapes recorded in their patrol cars, put paid to that. To the point when although the main broadcasters invest in the best quality equipment available for their mainline programmes, there is much that is broadcast which frankly demeans the term.

So what is the non-technical bride or groom to do? Here’s some key advice:

1 Ask if your programmes will look as good as the demo disk. Here I’m reminded by a correspondent that the disk on which the programme is recorded (DVD or Blu-ray) will have its own limitations but of course they’ll apply to all programmes.

2 Ask what the production company will do if their programme runs over about 80 minutes – if the company doesn’t say they’ll either use a dual-layer disk or two single-layer disk, beware because they’re going to squeeze on more programme by reducing the image quality.

3 If you are prepared to be baffled by waffle, ask them what bit-rate their cameras record at.

If they say 50Mbit/s (megabits per second) your video should look as good as a top-line drama sold on disk by the BBC or ITV. You can also expect to pay an arm and a leg for your wedding video because their investment in cameras will be huge.

If they say 35Mbits/s you’ll be getting a top quality wedding video at a price you can afford which will be barely distinguishable from the best recorded programmes.

If they say anything less, – well, you know the rest.

But it will still be HD; just remember the Bard’s caution, all that glisters isn’t gold.

Better than a chocolate fountain

The day of the DJ – and I mean Disk Jockey, not Dinner Jacket or any other variation – has passed. No more the heavy boxes of records or even CDs, no more enough equipment to start a radio station. Today’s recorded music “introducer” comes equipped with two I-Pods, a minute mixer and a couple of speakers.

In fact, even this DJ is becoming a thing of the past. Not a few couples are creating their own playlists on their I-Pods, hiring an amplifier and providing precisely their own music.

At the same time other entertainers are appearing at weddings. Clowns and Balloon Benders for the children, casino tables with professional croupiers for the Las Vegas theme and even live bands playing everything from the hits of the 60s to the current chart music.

For my money the best value are the Singing Waiters – and I use the term generically, just in case there’s an act by that name.

We recorded one group of three tenors at a wedding we recorded at Elvetham Hall in Hampshire last summer. The singing was good, the choice of music ideal, in fact only an occasional lapse in microphone technique made the group anything but perfect.

What impressed us particularly was the way the waiters/tenors made sure they were seen and identified as serving staff before their act started. They wore the hotel’s uniform neckties and helped to serve the wedding breakfast and clear the empty dishes along with the regular staff. Thus when the leader introduced himself as Signor Barberoi, the Catering Manager, the guests, who knew nothing of the surprise, were ready to believe.

Twenty five minutes later the audience had been transformed from a polite wedding winding down after a dignified and beautifully staged wedding into party people ready to dance the night away.

Obviously a big part of the act depends on keeping the audience wondering as long as possible whether they are real waiters or real tenors. A measure of their success occurred in the kitchen as the cooking staff handed five plated meals to each server to take to the tables. So convincing was the ruse that the kitchen staff were taken aback when a waiter protested that he was a tenor not silver service and carrying only two plates was his limit.

Don’t get taken for a ride.

PHP Weddings are different to most of its competitors in a number of ways; our proper, one-to-one interviews, our “Sound of Music” shot, a free video camera for your honeymoon and the fact that you don’t pay the full price before your wedding are just a few.

Another difference is our single, all-inclusive price.

Most of our competitors offer a range of prices, ostensibly to reflect the cost of having different amounts of coverage on the day. In fact, because so much of the job is done after the wedding day, the range of packages is only there to create a low start price, a loss-leader like the below-cost loaf or cheap bag of sugar to get you into the supermarket.

In reality almost every couple buys the most expensive package, after all who wants a video of only half their wedding?

But there’s a new twist to this sales technique going on in the Manchester area. At least one wedding video and photography company now offers no less than six different packages, starting at a few hundred pounds for a single camera, single operator coverage of the ceremony to a two-camera, two-operator Platinum package covering the whole day at £2000.

However, regardless of the package couples order, the company sends along the whole team and records all day long. The material is then edited according to the company’s Platinum package.

Now we all know how enthralled couples are to see their wedding video for the first time. That’s when our competitor tells them that what they’re seeing is actually the more expensive package which will cost them up to £1400 more. They can, of course, wait for a few more
weeks whilst the company edits the material to the lower standard that they originally paid for, but in fact, having seen the better quality production most couples find a way to stretch to the new higher price the company wants for its Platinum package.

I’m quite sure it’s not dishonest in the literal sense of the word but it does strike me as rather immoral.

And it’s one of the reasons with all our demonstration disks we include a Value Comparison chart which enables couples to calculate what other people’s various packages are really going to cost them and see why PHP Weddings really are the best value wedding video production company, bar none.

I blame Patrick Swayze ….

It’s becoming increasingly popular for couples to have their first dance choreographed professionally and then taught to them over the weeks before the wedding. Perhaps it’s a left-over from Dirty Dancing in which the late and wonderful Patrick Swayze persuaded men they
weren’t pansies if they swung their hips and expressed their emotions through dance. More likely it’s because if Mark Ramprakash and Darren Gough can do it without any gags about their sexuality, so can our man.

I can imagine that brides too, revelling in their full dresses, enjoy the sensation of twirling and “sashaying” around the floor in time to a favourite song.

As a video producer I certainly find it more satisfying to record a choreographed performance rather than the traditional “Hollywood Shuffle” which was a simple contrivance to have each of the dancers facing the camera to deliver their lines.

But it isn’t as easy as the choreographers, on Strictly as well as at your local dance school, make it look. It takes practice and commitment, probably a little talent and certainly bags of enthusiasm. And it can still go wrong – for a number of reasons.

Firstly the songs couples choose are invariably their favourites and mean something to them. Sadly that doesn’t necessarily make them good songs to dance to. Unless you’re well into dancing, it’s sensible to choose a song with a well-defined, constant beat and a tempo you can dance to without being a Fred Astaire. My advice would be to take a list of your favourites to your choreographer and let them choose one that works.

Secondly, discuss with your choreographer what sort of dance you want to be taught. Often couples seem to be led towards what are essentially “show” dances. That’s fine if head flips and leg kicks come naturally to you. Unless you’re comfortable with that sort of dance my
advice would be to ask your choreographer to teach you a fairly standard cha-cha-cha, samba or beguine and embelish it with some twirls and spins for the bride to show off her dress.

The advantages are that you’ll have something in your skill stock that can be brought out whenever you’re dancing and you’ll not feel uncomfortable performing the moves on your wedding day.

Finally, gentlemen, whilst you’re rehearsing please remember that on the wedding day your partner may well be wearing a much fuller dress than she’s ever worn with you before. It might well be dirty dancing but not as Patrick showed us and you’ll certainly get nul points for standing all over your bride’s dress!