No two weddings are the same. It sounds like a cliché that any couple would love to believe but after 10 years of filming weddings, I can honestly say it is true. Few weddings however feel as personal and intimate as Erica and Matt’s wedding day. From our first contact with Erica, as this wedding day film was a surprise for husband-to-be Matt, we realised their story stood out.

When we filmed their wedding day at the gorgeous Walton Hall we were not disappointed. The whole day was carefully and personally put together. It was a wedding day that really was the couple’s day! Personalised vows, the jumping of the broom, the way they each had their own version of how Matt invited himself to Thanksgiving at Erica’s just a few weeks after they met, the heartfelt speeches … this couple clearly knew what their wedding meant and we felt privileged in sharing their special day.

In bringing all the details together and making sure everything ran like clockwork, Erica was assisted by wedding planner Isobel Lamplough of Isobel Weddings. We also had the pleasure of sharing this day with one of our favourite wedding photographers: the very talented Allister Freeman.

During their wedding speeches, we learned that Matt is a business coach and was about to become a published author on this subject. So it’s hardly a surprise that we were very excited to be invited to Matt’s book launch event in the UK. We had a great time meeting up with Matt and have already started reading his ‘Fearless Referrals’. It’s been an enjoyable and interesting read so far and I’m sure it will prove very useful for any looking to grow their business.

Without further ado, I hope you’ll enjoy this highlight section from their wedding day film.

And to continue our celebrations, if you fancy getting your hands on this scrumptious good bag, just go to our Facebook page and find out how you can win this.

We’re just over halfway through our 10 day celebrations.

On day 1 we announced the 10% discount for any new bookings during our 10 day celebrations.

Day 2: the competition to win an Amazon gift voucher for the best proposal story on our Facebook wall (you can still enter)

Day 3: the lovely news that we were accepted to Style Me Pretty’s Little Black Book

Day 4: giving away an extra copy of their wedding DVD to 3 of our past couples (entries for this close tonight)

Day 5: a new clip on our blog

Day 6: it’s time to give away something a bit bigger.

How about a FREE bridal elegance,  engagement shoot or a save the date clip? That’s pretty cool, right. So what do you need to do get your hands on this one? Just send us a quick email to let us know you are interested, we need to receive the email by 24 February. We will choose one email randomly. Anybody is welcome to enter this competition, it’s not just for our current or past clients! Now there are two little rules attached to this win: 1. it has to be in the Sheffield area (or if you really insist on doing elsewhere, we will have to ask you to cover our travel expenses); and 2. The shoot has to be completed in 1 day. Simple, right?

You can come up with your own ideas, or a theme, or you can just leave it up to us. We can guarantee you a day of fun filming it all, and a little film that you will surely treasure forever.

So if you’re interested in seeing some examples why not check out these clips:

Vanessa’ Bridal Elegance, filmed in Sheffield

Elizabeth & Andi Engagement Film set in Vienna

Evelyne’s Trash the Dress filmed in Belgium

After a short walk outside, I found out that winter is still here. I really needed some warming up, so when I was choosing a clip to share today, it shouldn’t be a surprise that I take you back to the height of last summer.
Although it was the start of September, Pete and Lisa’s wedding day was basking in glorious sunshine. The early morning hustle and bustle of the wedding definitely got the flower girls excited! Apart from a stunning dress, Lisa had the most amazing vintage hairpiece. While she was getting a few more pictures taken, our excited groom was already eagerly awaiting her at the church. The ceremony took place in the very same church were Pete and Lisa had their daughter’s christening ceremony, which was followed by Pete’s wedding proposal. Weekley church near Kettering is a gorgeous historic church that dates back to Saxon times. And some die-hard Jane Austen fans might also recognise this church as it was used for the exterior of Mr Collins’ church in the 2005 film adaptation of Pride & Prejudice starring Keira Knightley and Matthew Macfadyen.

It is always a pleasure to come across our past brides and on that day Liza (brilliant make-up artist) was one of the guests. Following the personal ceremony and a photo shoot on the church grounds, we were off to the Park Hotel in Kettering for the reception. During the speeches Lisa’s sister dedicated a live performance of ‘Wind Beneath My Wings’ to our bride which resulted in plenty of tears all around the room. After a very well performed first dance with a beautifully romantic ending, the tone was set for a fun filled evening.
I hope you’ll enjoy this highlights clip of their wedding day.

Here’s the current front runner to win the £25 Amazon voucher in our proposal story competition. It’s a truly heart warming story and I wanted to share it with as many people as possible.

“In 2004, Ever After did an amazing job filming my wedding to my love, Adam. It was a financial splurge at the time, but when we saw the finished product we were absolutely thrilled. A year later, my Adam was killed by an elderly driver, and that DVD became one of my most treasured possessions. At that time, I was 28 years old, widowed, and suffering from two auto-immune diseases. My family and friends gave me the will to go on, and try to find happiness for myself, but I felt that I had a great love, and lost it, and had resigned myself to being on my own. It was not the life I’d imagined, but I was ok with that.

Annie on her wedding day in 2004

In 2008, my friend Paul, who was also a friend of my late husband, had become one of my closest friends. Spending time with him & his rescue dog, Blossom, had become the highlight of my week. He invited me to a New Year’s party, hoping to introduce me to some of his nice, single friends and get me dating again. Much to my surprise, I kept comparing those friends to Paul and finding them wanting- for one thing, they didn’t come with a rock star 60 lb lapdog!

Just after midnight, fortified by some champagne, and the feeling I was looking pretty good in a fairly short skirt (I suspect this was also champagne related), I planted one on Paul, to his complete shock (to be fair, I kind of pounced on him, like a spider-monkey.)

Fortunately for me, he was happily shocked, and so began a new relationship, and the belief that it maybe was possible to have more than one chance at a true, great love.

In 2010, on a trip to Spain for a dear friend’s wedding, we were on a catamaran sunset cruise in Valencia when he stunned me and proposed! Paul had carried a ring all the way from Boston to Spain and floored me with an incredibly romantic proposal. I actually thought he was tying his shoe and then started wondering if somehow I hadn’t realized he didn’t know how to tie a shoe, he’d been crouching so long. I looked down, snarky shoe-tying teasing remark on my lips, and saw him kneeling, looking up at me, holding a ring.

I never thought I would love again, and to be honest, I didn’t really know if I wanted to, but Paul made me believe, for the first time in a long time, that someone with as much physical and emotional baggage as I have still has a chance at a ‘happily ever after.’ He loves me, even with all my illness and grief. He’s become an expert at giving me injections, he knows which hospitals have the best ERs, he lets me rest my feet in his lap as I knit each night, he brings me meds & snacks when my arthritis is bad, and he never, ever complains when I put my freezing feet on him at night.

At 34, my life has had a lot of tragedy, loss, and too much pain for one person to really process sometimes, but more than anything I am overwhelmed by love. The love I’ll always have for Adam, the love I feel for my family and friends, and the love I never expected to find again, with Paul. I cannot wait to marry this incredibly kind, patient, loving and wonderful man, and start a new chapter in our lives together. I am one lucky bitch.” Annie Bell

If you want to enter your proposal story, just go to our Facebook page and get your friends and family to vote for yours!

I promised I would share some lovely news with you today.

As you may well know, there are tons of wedding blogs out there these days; we’ve been following several of them for years now. One of our favourites is Style Me Pretty, it’s always ever so stylish and elegant and they feature some of the most beautiful weddings I’ve ever seen. We had been wondering for a while now if we should apply to become one of their recommended vendors. Unlike many regular wedding website where you just pay to advertise, Style Me Pretty has a rather vigorous vetting process.

As they say so themselves: “Style Me Pretty’s Little Black Book is a highly edited collection of wedding service providers – from mom and pop boutiques to A-Listers. Bottom line, these vendors are the best of the best.”

And another thing we really appreciate about Style Me Pretty is that they recognise the true value of wedding films.

“One of our favorite parts of the wedding experience is the wedding video that follows, as they often capture the wedding in a way that is nearly tangible. We’re not talking about your average, run of the mill wedding videos. We’re talking about wedding cinema that is stunning in its depth, captivating in its authenticity, timeless in its composure. Wedding cinema that gives you a front row seat to the most gorgeous weddings you’ve ever seen, that makes you feel like you are one of the invited guests. They will make you cry, they will make you laugh, they will quite possibly bring out the total romantic in you no matter how many times you view them.”

So we went ahead and send our CV to Style Me Pretty, within a few days we were accepted! You can now find us in their Little Black Book, under Destination Vendors (you know we like to travel), in London, and as the first ever listing for the Netherlands!

Yesterday we started of the Ever After Birthday Celebrations with 10% discount offer for anyone who books us during the 10 days of festivities. Today, we just started the first of our celebratory competitions on our Facebook page!

Share your personal proposal story with us and you could win a £25 Amazon gift voucher. The winning proposal will be the one receiving the most “likes” and comments, giving 1 point for every “like” and 2 points for every comment.

So post the story of how you got engaged on our wall and share it with all your friends so they can vote for you. The competition is open to anyone, from current and past clients to people who just like what we do anywhere in the world, but make sure you post it before 24 February as that’s when the competition closes!

We’d love to hear as many proposal stories as possible, whether it was an elaborately planned proposal (like Elizabeth and Andi’s engagement video proposal) or a spur of the moment proposal, we want to hear about it! And even if you don’t want to share your engagement story, why not share this competition with your friends? I’m sure we can all do with a dose of pure loveliness!

And as I said, this is just the first competition. We will be having a few more and some give aways too over the next few days, with a grand prize on the final day. So check in daily!

We also have some lovely news coming up, can’t wait to share that with you all tomorrow!

10 Years ago today I filmed my very first wedding. I was in my final year at university, doing a BA(hons) in Film Studies and as much as I was enjoying the carefree student lifestyle, I had to figure out what to do with the rest of my life. Being a newly-wed, I put two and two together and thought to myself: filming weddings, this could be fun. So via the wonders of the internet I found two willing victims, Debbie and Neil, who were getting married on Valentine’s Day 2002 at the Lancashire Country Cricket Club in Manchester. On our way from Sheffield to Manchester we obviously got stuck in traffic, but managed to arrive just 5 minutes before the start of the ceremony, phew! After that day, I was hooked; this is what I would do once I graduated. So, armed with a business plan I went to bank and managed to get a small business loan, which along with a kind investment from my parents meant that I could buy a really nice camera and all the other equipment I needed to get started. The rest, as they say, is history.

Today, 10 years later, I can honestly say, starting Ever After is one of the best decisions I’ve ever made (along with marrying Niels and moving from Belgium to England). This job has given me so much more than I ever could have imagined. I’ve made some amazing friends for life, it has taken us to far-flung places all over the globe and I get to share in the happiness of some many wonderful couples.

So starting today, we are celebrating 10 days long! We’d like to thank and each and every one of you who have helped make Ever After into the fantastic company it is today. For 10 days, we’ll have give-aways, competitions and all-round good fun on our Facebook page. So make sure you visit us as every day will be different! And on the last day, there will be quite a big price, so stay tuned for that one!

www.facebook.com/everafterfilms

And just so you know, during these 10 days, anyone who books their wedding with us will receive a 10% discount on all our main packages.

With most of the UK covered under a white snowy blanket, I thought I’d warm you up with a nice summery clip. Katie and Mark got married at the gorgeous Wakehurst Place in Sussex, a venue chosen with care as Katie used to work here. It was pretty much picture perfect: marvellous venue, great venue coordinator, beautiful gardens and even a lovely summer’s day!
We had had great time working with the Katie, the coordinator, and Martin Briggs, photographer of the day. A special mention must also go to Vivienne Donnithorne, the celebrant. Vivienne designed and presided over the humanist wedding ceremony. Throughout the ceremony we were told of the journey that brought Katie and Mark to this day. It was without a doubt one of the most personal ceremonies we had the pleasure of filming and by the end we really felt we knew the couple a bit better. It was easy to tell their wedding meant a lot to Katie and Mark as the whole day had personal little touches. My favourite without a doubt was the gorgeous Kiwi-shaped wedding cake especially made by one of the aunties!

Humanist wedding ceremonies are still a bit of a rarity here in England. Unlike Scotland, we don’t seem to have moved with the times and humanist ceremonies are not yet legally  binding and thus still require a civil ceremony first. I can honestly say as far as ceremonies go, this type of celebration is a personal as it gets. The British Humanist Association has been campaigning to try and get recognition for their wedding ceremonies from the government. As the government so far failed to act, I’d like to encourage you to sign their petition and make sure England no longer trails behind Scotland!

I’m sure nobody doubts that Ever After specialises in making your wedding memories last a lifetime. We do occasionally embark on other little projects and I think it is time that we share one of those on our blog, especially as this little project is actually wedding related as well!

The number one priority of a bride is more often than not ‘The Dress’.  Over the years we’ve seen wedding dresses in all sorts and shapes, and when Kittie and Dulcie contacted us to film their new vintage inspired line of dresses, we jumped on the opportunity to get a sneak peek of their fabulous dresses. During the hustle and bustle time of hair and make-up we took a few shots of the dresses on a hanger and captured the electric atmosphere that was brewing.

The shoot took place in central London. The operational base of the day couldn’t have been located any better: right next to Spitalfield market and the quaint shop Dolly Dare.  Yep, the vintage inspiration really came through even in the locations. Once the models were dressed and ready, we walked around the corner to start shooting. This being London, nobody gave our troop of models, dressers, hair and make-up artists or cinematographers a second look. The joys of working in our capital; I’m sure we would have stopped traffic in a lot of other places.

We had a great time filming and chatting about dress making. A few weeks later we completed our brief and had some catwalk-style shots ready for the website. Of course we couldn’t resist making a little clip to capture this day. I hope you’ll enjoy it and make sure to visit the Kitty and Dulcie website to see the catwalk shots of the dresses.

Last year, we spent Christmas Eve/night stuck in airports, utterly frustrated at the lack of any customer service or support or even staff. This year, we things were back to our traditional way of spending Christmas: having the best “do-nothing” day. Niels and I just spend the day relaxing, having a lie-in, watching a few movies, no cooking, … All in all, just pure bliss. We hope that, however you spent your Christmas, it was equally wonderful.

But today, we’re back at work and back to blogging. And we’re taking you back to last summer, to the wedding of Sammy and James. We did already share a tiny flavour of their wedding back then on our Facebook page, but now we share the proper highlights. Sammy and James tied the knot at Penshurst Place in Kent, a stunning medieval stately home, kept in all its old world grandeur. They chose this venue because of their love for all things medieval and historical. We filmed another wedding here back in 2003 and it left quite the impression on us. Going back there now, it certainly still lived up to the memory. A drinks reception outside in the courtyard with a string quartet playing and perfect blue skies, what more could they have wished for?

And for us, it was a joy to work at Sammy and James wedding together with their photographers Mark and Marianne from Earthy Photography and the ever so friendly team at Penshurt.

Wedding Dress: Alfredo Angelo

Wedding Shoes: Benjamin Adams

Venue: Penshurt Place

Photographers: Earthy Photography

String Quartet: Penshurst String Quartet

Toastmaster: Roy Theobald