Southern Weddings

Hello! This post couldn’t have come during a better week–Dave and I flew up to Syracuse over the weekend for an engagement party with his family and friends in New York. My future in-laws outdid themselves with the sweetest “North meets South” party, complete with mason jars, my favorite Southern delicacies, Dave’s favorite goodies from New York, and even a real wagon wheel, in honor of our song! We were tickled pink, and it made us even more excited for our wedding, less than one year from now!!

Shortly after we chose our beautiful venues and amazing photographer, Dave and I turned to one of our next priority vendors: a videographer. Having read countless stories of brides who regretted not getting any video on their wedding day, or being disappointed when the whole “friend with a video camera” thing yielded less-than-stellar results, skimping on a videographer was not an option for Dave and me. I’m the resident wedding film nerd in the SW office and the term “cry-teria” was even jokingly coined as a standard I review films with–I get teary-eyed over most!

North Carolina is home to an impressive number of wonderful videographers (view them in the Blue Ribbon Vendor Directory!), but Dave and I were pretty set on our top choice. When we tell people the story of how we met and fell in love (read it here if you missed it), one thing people say to us often is that it sounds like a movie. To be honest, it has felt like one at times too! Our wedding day is one of the few big moments in our lives that will be on video, so we knew we wanted to hire someone we could trust to capture our relationship and the feeling of everything that led to our wedding day in a thoughtful and cinematic way. Thanks to their incredibly story-driven editing skills and filming expertise, Inkspot Crow was the natural choice!

Dave and I set aside a good portion of our budget for videography, but when we found out that Inkspot Crow’s smallest filming package was a few hundred dollars more than what we had budgeted, we almost backed out. There were some other things we could cut from our budget to make it work, but we took awhile to figure out whether or not it was worth it to us. In the end, we decided that we would rather have a smaller videography package that we were super confident about, rather than a larger package that we perhaps weren’t quite as confident about. (Disclaimer: I’m not saying at ALL that a more expensive vendor is always the best choice, no exceptions, but for us, we decided to splurge more because Inkspot Crow’s style was the perfect fit for us.)

We also made our decision with the sparkling recommendation of SW’s own Emily and John! I’m sure I’m not the only one who absolutely swooned over their wedding highlights film last year (see below!), and Emily spoke so highly of her experience with MacKenzie and Philip. Additionally, now that I know Emily and John personally, I can attest to the fact that their video is so them. When it comes down to it, the most important thing we want from our wedding video is for it to be a true reflection of our story and personalities. Especially considering that E&J’s fits them to a tee, Dave and I have total faith in Inkspot Crow to make our film reflect us beautifully as well.

Will you be hiring a videographer? How did you make your decision?

In case you missed a post…
I’m Engaged!
The Main Characters
Our Venues
Our Photographer

Written with love by Lisa