Nearly everyone hires a professional photographer for their wedding, because it is accepted that a photographer as well as producing visual aids to your memory, they are also essentially part of the traditional of the day.

You would have thought that a wedding video would be just as essential, since this is the greatest day of a couples life, and anything that helps you to remember is a good thing. Still some people prefer not to get a wedding video.

The main reasons are:

1, Cost. Since everything else is essential to the wedding day like the church, the flowers, the dress, the wedding video is usually the last thing people book and it is often the case that after paying for everything else, there is simply not enough money left.

Often we get booked because, at the last minute a family member decides that they will pay for it and therefore the bride and groom desperately scramble to find a suitable videographer. Most of the time we are booked in such a situation but often especially in winter we are not and as such, we take a booking on the night before the wedding.

Some couples however will still not book a videographer simply because they feel that they would rather spend the money else where, whether on the wedding itself, or on a completely other aspect of life.

2, Extra Pressure. There are moments when some one has to perform during a wedding day and having a video camera on them will add a sense of extra pressure. Make a mess of your speech and rather than it being forgotten in a few months, it will be recorded for all to see.

This element can be advantageous how ever, because I have heard it said many times by groomsmen, that because they knew they were going to be filmed, they put extra practice and preparation into their speech. This definitely improves the quality of the speeches at your wedding, because in my experience when a speeches goes bad, it is almost always because the speech maker is over confident, and felt before the wedding that they could just wing it. They suddenly stand up in front of a load of people, who all hanging on their every word, and suddenly the pressure hits them and they fall apart.

3, Intrusion. There are times when people feel that they do not want a camera in their face. An example of this would be when some is feeling emotional, but then that is the point of us as wedding photographers and videographers, to capture the emotion of the day. We always make a point of shooting on a tripod, so that our cameras are essentially stationery objects like furniture. We feel that by doing this, people rarely notice us. 

In summary, the wedding video is not for everyone, but I have lost count of the number of times I have spoken to a brides maid and she has said that having watched her friend's wedding video, she totally regrets not getting one of her wedding. The truth is that yes a wedding videographer does cost money and yes it can add a little extra intrusion and pressure on the day, but this is the greatest day of your life, when you are eighty years old and its all a distant memory, you would obviously just love to pop your wedding video on and relive the entire day.