My Wedding Video and Photo Fiasco

I had a wedding three years ago and the memories from the country club patio filled with the smiley faces of loved ones is something I will always cherish. We hired a photographer and a videographer in hopes of them capturing the moments so we can relive them. To say the least, they did an awful job. Because this article is not about them, I will leave out their names. My inspiration for this article is to share my experience and hopefully save somebody from making the same mistakes we made. With spring and summer just around the corner, I am sure there are several people planning weddings. So what better time to share the nuggets of wisdom I have shared with various young couples in my church.

First of all, remember that price and value are not the same things. Price is the amount of money you pay for a product or service and value is what you get for the money you paid. The fact that you are paying a lot of money does not guarantee value. However, if you want value, you may have to part with a little more cash than the average rate for that particular service.


So here is an example. If you pay a video guy $400 to cover your $25,000 wedding, you might be courting disaster. It gets even ridiculous when you sign up for one of those deals where the photographer is the same person working the camera for the video just so you will pay him $600 for both.


For our wedding, we paid this guy $1,500 to do our video. We took comfort in the fact that he was popular around here. We did not ask to see samples of his work. We somehow trusted that he will know what he was doing. Mind you, he originally wanted $2,200. We talked him down to $1,500 and we felt it was a good deal for two reasons. Firstly, the going rate for a professional wedding video in our metro area is between $1,800 and $2,000, plus overtime if you exceeded 7 hours. Secondly, with this guy being a Ghanaian, we figured he was not going to cut the music ‘recklessly’ since he understood the language.


Moreover, he was going to give us 3-hour final DVDs. We spoke with him on two occasions sharing with him what we would like to see in the final video and my wife even went through the trouble of making the list of shots to help him not miss any important moments.


We got our video two months after the wedding and my wife cried. First of all, our names were spelt wrong on the cover but I did not think much of it. Disc 1 begins in the church. What happened to all the video from when the girls were getting ready? At the church, it started with the bridesmaids walking down the aisle and there was no sound up until the in the middle of my wife’s walk down the aisle. I was hoping that was as bad as it was going to get but I was in for more surprises. Our sermon was quite long and the problem was not with the fact that he cut some of it out but the way in which he did it. The pastor will be in the middle of a sentence and then it cuts to the middle of another sentence. Just before the sermon ended, in pops a video of somebody’s outdooring (which played for a long 30 seconds).

The reception was on the second disc. Apart from the reckless cuts, the sound was out of sync with the actions showing on the screen. So people will clap and then 5 seconds later you hear the applause. My wife walked away after 10 minutes into the second disc to go call the guy. I stayed and watched the rest of this painful video.


Well, it took the guy a week to return our calls with the lame excuse that he was out of town working and did not take his phone with him. We took our raw videos to see if there was anything we could do to save the video and there was not much we could do. And did you know he wanted us to pay an extra $200 for the raw video?


The photographer was a very nice guy and we had seen his pictures. We were impressed with the pictures he showed us for which reason we hired him. I am not sure if he showed us somebody else’s pictures to get the job because there were so many scenes we expected that we did not see and half of what we saw was blurry. There were so many pictures of individual guests and I am told by a friend the idea is for him to make some extra money from when the people come to him to get their pictures enlarged. That would not bother me if I had not paid $1,200.


A friend suggested I take them to court. That will be a huge waste of my time. And besides it’s like waking a dead person. My wife is still upset and rightfully so. We have nothing to show for this wedding.


For our fifth wedding anniversary, we will have a celebration and in order to get a good replacement wedding video, we will have our wedding all over again. This time around, we are doing our homework well.

So I hope our story teaches you a lesson or two. At the least, don’t take the guy at only his word. See samples, ask people who he has done work for. Don’t be naïve about sticking with only the Ghanaian market. Even if you want to use a Ghanaian professional for the cultural convenience, it will be well worth it to fly somebody in from out of town. I have seen videos produced by some Ghanaian video producers and I know you can get good value if you do your research.


There is no amount of compensation that will make up for a wedding moment that was missed. So plan your wedding and plan it right. Ask the people in your bridal party if they know someone and I am sure they will come up with about two or three names. Interview these guys, see samples of their work and then hire the best. When you watch the video after the wedding is done, you will be glad you did.


I hope this helps. Good luck.

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