My husband and I met in kindergarten (can’t make it up) in Detroit, MI and so when we got engaged in the fall of 2012 we knew right away we wanted to get married in northern Michigan where my grandparents live and where we spend as much time as possible in the summer. Since we live in Brooklyn we left most of the wedding planning to my mother and grandmother who LOVE to plan parties. They chose all of our vendors, and my parents and their friends even did our food and cake tasting! I knew they had great taste and was busy running social media and content strategy at Birchbox. One day my mom called and asked me if I wanted to have a wedding video. I immediately pictured a guy with a big camera on his shoulder putting a microphone and bright light into drunk guests eyes and said, “nah that’s OK let’s skip it.” I didn’t think about it again.
Flash forward to June 2013. Our wedding was perfect in every way. As you can see by the photos, my mother and grandmother put together the MOST stunning barn wedding. The weather was gorgeous, and we were over-the-moon to be surrounded by our family and friends. My brother, best friend, and mom even planned a surprise flashmob, which our guests had been secretly practicing for and performed for us at the wedding — it was really the best day I’ve ever had.
As soon as the wedding was over I began to immediately regret that someone hadn’t been there to film the flashmob. We did our best with the iPhone footage that our friends sent (see it here — it’s pretty epic) but couldn’t believe we hadn’t had a professional there to capture it. And then, I started to notice that most of my friends who were also getting married at that time were having wedding videos. And they weren’t what I remembered at all. I specifically recall seeing my friends’ Aaron and Michelle’s film, who were married six weeks after us, and saying aloud, “This wedding film is AMAZING?! Do people know about these?”
That’s when I started researching two things: 1) DID people know about wedding videos and how amazing they were? And 2) Was there anywhere to watch them? 1) Yes. People knew. Wedding videos (I prefer to call them films) have changed SO much over the last few years, and smarter people than me had definitely taken notice and hired a filmmaker to document their wedding. Gone were the jumpy, cheesy films I remembered; these new films were cinematic pieces of art that more resembled feature film trailers than old-school wedding videos. And 2), no. Unless you want to comb Vimeo or go to individual filmmaker websites, there was nowhere
And so LoveStoriesTV.com was born. On our site you can browse wedding films contributed by newlyweds and filmmakers from all over the world, according to the categories you want to sort by when planning a wedding: location, venue type, wedding dress designer, bride’s hairstyle, wedding theme, cinematographer, and more. Or, if you’re not wedding planning quite yet (or are happily married but just love love) you can watch according to editorial categories like: Best Groom Reactions, Dads Who Will Make You Cry, and Pets In The Ceremony. If YOU have a wedding video we’d love to feature you!
Rachel Jo Silver is the founder and CEO of Love Stories TV: The place to watch wedding videos. Prior to founding Love Stories TV, Rachel spent four years running social media at Birchbox. When she’s not building the largest library of real wedding videos, you can find Rachel on Snapchat and Instagram sharing her favorite wedding trends and a beauty tip or three.
No Comments