All the research wedding magazines carry out continues to show that couples rank the
importance of having a wedding video much, much higher after their wedding than before.
It’s as if they’ve realised at the wedding that the day is passing before them in a joyous blur
and that at least some of their family and friends won’t be around at their next family event.
Conveying this to couples I meet at Wedding Fairs and other events needs tact and discretion
and both of those need time which we don’t always have at the larger fairs. Even putting it in
print on our website needs careful phrasing so it was with great pleasure I discovered the
following passage in Donald Spoto’s biography of Ingrid Bergman which I read recently.
I’ve paraphrased it a little due to space constraints but it carries most of the dialogue from the
original.
In 1979 Ingrid Bergman, already diagnosed with cancer, was honoured at a dinner held at
Warner Bros Burbank studio – where Casablanca’s interiors had been shot 37 years earlier.
In response to the many tributes, she showed and narrated a black and white film.
“When my father discovered something new had happened – motion pictures,” she explained,
“he was so enthusiastic that on my birthdays and special days, he rented a hand-cranked
movie camera.” The film flickered on to the screen. “That’s me on my mother’s lap, my
grandparents are behind me. That was my first screen appearance, one year old in 1916.
Now here, I am two years old, and there is my mother who pushed me around in my little
wheelbarrow – my first stage prop.
Now there is my mother – and how happy that makes me – since there I can see her move and
smile. I didn’t know what to do in the scenes, nobody gave me direction, but here I am three
years old and I am coming to my mother’s grave, I am putting flowers on her grave.
You can understand why I am so happy to have those earlier shots, where I can see her move
and smile and hold me up – how lovely that was.”
I don’t think I could have put it better.
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