A Dream Becomes Reality

When we first started dreaming about and planning our wedding, sticking to a budget that would allow us to have a fantastic event without draining our savings and that of my parents who are graciously contributing 2/3 of the budget was a priority. With that priority in mind, I put my MBA to the test and started hashing out a rough budget. In the months since that budget has been tweaked, pruned, preened, expanded, cut and slashed in a hundred different ways. From the beginning I knew date, location and photography were my top priorities and things like a designer dress, a fancy cake and elaborate flowers were not, even though I love all of those things as much as the next girl. One thing I never even considered was videography. No way, no how, it just was not going to happen.

Many months into the planning process and I can safely say that videography is the one thing I’ve changed my mind about completely and have not wavered on since. Unfortunately, I still did not know how to make it happen and doubted we’d find room in the budget. Remember E’s amazing same-day edit video by the incredible Simply Cinematic? Or how about the genius that is Mrs. Milkshake’s same-day-edit by Toronto-based Still Motion? These are just two of the beautiful reasons why I’ve been crying myself to sleep every night for the last six months because I knew we wouldn’t be able to work videography into the budget. Ok, so maybe I haven’t exactly been crying myself to sleep, but I have been thinking, hoping, wishing and dreaming. A lot.

If you’re like me you’ll remember the beautiful wedding of Caitlin and Evan {above} featured on EAD last month, shot by the fabulous Luke Walker. As it turns out, Luke and his fiancee, photographer Alisha Clark, have recently opened up shop on a business they now run together, Lillie Studios, the focus of which is primarily incredible cinematic quality videography in the Upstate NY region. You can actually watch a trailer from Caitlin and Evan’s wedding on the Lillie Studios website…I absolutely love how it turned out!

A few weeks ago, I posted on my own blog about the stunning vintage handkerchiefs Alisha and Luke are using as Save the Dates for their own upcoming wedding, which E also shared here on EAD. At any rate, this all led to Luke and I exchanging a handful of emails and I decided to reach out to him about whether he might be able to recommend a videographer, not realizing Lillie Studios and Luke were essentially one and the same. I was also chatting with E one night via Gmail Chat about my undying thirst for videography. I’ve been a bridesmaid several times in recent years and a lot of my newlywed friends share the same piece of advice about their budget, all along the general lines of “My one regret is not saving money somewhere else and hiring a videographer,” or “Hands down the best money we spent was for videography.” Months of hearing this advice coupled with falling deeply and madly in love with the new modern cinematic take on wedding videos and I was completely convinced. Ironcially enough, E had also suggested I get in touch with Luke, explained the Lillie Studios connection and suddenly, my little videography pipe dream seemed to get a whole lot more realistic.

As of this week when we drop a signed contract and a retainer check in the mail, we will officially be welcoming Alisha and Lillie Studios to join us on our wedding day. I could cry with excitement, it’s that tangible to me. I had spent countless hours researching, watching horrible video samples on videographer websites, and pulling my hair out in frustration over the fact that the only videography I loved was horribly out of the realm of possibilities because it would require flying someone in from some major metro area that was just out of our reach. Low and behold, I am so happy to have been proven wrong and all it took was finding myself happily immersed in the wonders of the blogging community and asking the right questions of the right people. I could not be happier at the turn of events. You can rest assured I will be dying with glee when I get to share our very own wedding video trailer with all of you on EAD in the weeks after the wedding.

The moral of my story is this - never rule anything out if you truly feel it will make your day even more special. Talk to other brides, the vendors you’ve hired, ask people who they know and make sure you’ve done due diligence before nixing something you really love and upon which you have your heart set. Send emails, make phone calls, ask questions,  put on your Nancy Drew hat for a while and in the words of my beloved Tim Gunn, make it work. Don’t be afraid to change your mind, don’t be afraid to get rejected and just go for it, because I can safely say that between photography and videography I know I’m going to walk away with lasting memories and smiles for a lifetime and it took a lot of ground work, research and talking with people to make those things happen but it was worth every second.

Has anyone else changed their mind about a major budget item? Does anyone else sit at their computer and cry over amazing videos from the weddings of complete strangers? You know you’re out there, don’t even try denying it!