How I Became a Documentary Wedding Videographer

I did not set out to become a documentary wedding videographer. I fell into it slowly, one wedding day at a time, standing a few feet behind the person I love most.

For the first several years my wife, Taylor, and I were together, I was her assistant. I held her bags. I handed her fresh batteries between the ceremony and the toasts. I watched how she moved through a room, how she waited for a moment instead of forcing one. Then one day she put a camera in my hands, and over the next five to seven years I became her trusted second shooter.

The Wedding That Taught Me Everything About Sound

Around 2019, just before the pandemic, I fell in love with the idea of video and the thought of building something as a husband and wife team. I shot my first wedding for a couple hundred dollars, enough to buy a microphone and a tripod. One camera. I would not recommend that setup to anyone.

During the vows, someone in the back row coughed. My heart sank, because I knew that shotgun mic had picked it up and I could never take it out. That single moment shaped how I have worked ever since. You can find a beautiful location. You can light everything perfectly. But a father’s voice cracking, a friend laughing through tears, a promise spoken from the heart, those cannot be recreated. That is when audio driven, documentary storytelling became the center of my craft rather than an afterthought.

Learning the Craft, 53 Weddings at a Time

Then the pandemic hit, and it turned into the most intense classroom I could have asked for. Between us, Taylor and I shot 53 weddings in a single year. I kept my prices low, kept saying yes, and met some genuinely wonderful couples along the way. My pricing grew. More importantly, my eye and my ear grew with it.

Why I Still Choose Weddings

What keeps me here is not the pretty visuals, though I care about those deeply. It is the emotion and the heart behind every story, the words from family and friends that only get said once. A great documentary wedding film is not staged. It listens.

If that is the kind of film you want to remember your day by, I would love to hear your story. Reach out and inquire directly here, and let’s talk about what your wedding sounds like, not just what it looks like.