Have I ever mentioned how much I love my job? It really must be one of the best of jobs in the world. Couples let me be a part of the happiest day in their lives, and I get to make an amazing keepsake of the memories they will never want to forget. Plus, it also takes me to places all over the world.

Speaking of which, last month we were in Florida, not for a vacation, but to cover a wedding, Susan and Michael’s wedding. They decided to book our services based on the recommendation of one of our former brides Annie, always lovely when that happens. They flew us out to Saint Augustine for their wedding at the Cathedral Basilica, the oldest parish in the US. We knew Susan as Annie’s  bridesmaid, we’d been chatting with her on Facebook for a few months now and meeting up with her the day before the wedding felt more like meeting up with an old friend rather than with a “client”. We were kindly invited to the rehearsal dinner where we got to meet the whole family who were all so lovely and welcoming.

The day of the wedding was a rather cold day in Florida, sadly somewhat overcast too, but that didn’t dampen any of the spirits. As their first date, Michael took Susan on plane ride. So Susan thought it would be a great idea if Michael would go out to the airport and fly over St Augustine. Niels was lucky enough to join him on the plane. Meanwhile, Susan was getting ready at her mum’s house. Everything went like clockwork, no panics, no delays, quite unusual really. Susan even arrived early at the church! After a lovely ceremony, with a great sermon by father Ryan, everyone went down to White Room to celebrate the night away.

The next morning, at 9am, Susan and Mike were up and dressed in their wedding attire again as we were taking them on a bit of stroll around St Augustine. That morning the sun came out and brought out all the beautiful colours of St Augustine. It was lovely having some relaxing time with just the two of them without the rush of the wedding day and the images we got as a result are amazing.

I could keep babbling on about this wedding,  but as they say, an image is worth a thousand words, well, this being a short little teaser, it should say even more!

Happy Valentine’s Day

Notable mentions go to

The photographers Mark and Joi – www.mark-brian.com

The Venue: The White Room, St Augustine – www.ocwhiteroom.com

The Church: Cathedral Basilica of St Augstine – www.thefirstparish.org

The On-the-Day Coordinator: Jennifer of 1-877-Le Concierge www.1877leconcierge.com

And considering it’s Valentine’s Day, we also have an offer on for new bookings (must book by next Monday). If you’re curious to find out more about it, just get in touch!

Time to announce the winners of our Best of 2010 Competition.

For 2 weeks in January we ran a competition to find the Best Wedding Video of 2010. It’s been fun seeing votes come in for all the couples and sharing the updates on the Ever After Facebook page (make sure you join us there to stay updated with everything we do). Most of the time, the votes were extremely close.  The last few days of the competition, it kept alternating between 2 couples, but now the polls have closed and we can reveal the winners.

In 1^st place with the most overall votes are Helena and Daniel! They will be receiving a £200 John Lewis Gift Voucher.

In 2^nd place, the wedding film receiving the most comments, are Carole & Neil! They will be receiving a £75 Amazon Gift Card soon.

We’ve also sent an email to one lucky voter who’ll be receiving a £25 Amazon Gift Card. Thank you to everybody who has voted! We’ll be holding another competition this time next year. We’ll get that contest started with Susan and Mike’s wedding film trailer filmed in St Augustine,Florida last month. Stay tuned, it will go live on this blog soon!

From all of us here at Ever After, we want to wish you a Happy 2011 and say a big thank you for continuing to follow our work!
A new year is now here and we’d like to take a moment and invite you to look back with us at the year that just ended. Our blog has featured quite a few wedding films in the past 12 months and we’d love to find out which ones were your favourites.

So for the next 2 weeks we’ll be running a short survey (until 31 January) to find the best clip of 2010! You’ll find a link to vote at the bottom of this post, please feel free to tell us what made you vote for these clips. We will update our facebook page periodically with the status of the survey so keep watching our facebook site for updates.

We ARE awarding prizes.
1st Place goes to the couple that receives the most overall votes. They will receive a £200 John Lewis Gift Voucher!
2nd Place goes to the couple whose film receives the most comments! They will receive a £75 Amazon Gift Certificate. So tell all your friends to comment!
And finally, we’re also giving a £25 Amazon Gift Certificate to one lucky voter!

Enjoy the clips and have fun voting!

THE 2010 EVER AFTER FILMS AWARDS NOMINEES!!

Based on the total number of views in the first 2 weeks of their blog appearance, the following six films are all in the running for the Best Film Award:

Click here to vote!

Tina & Joshua

Lauren & Nikki

Carole & Neil

Emma & James

Helena & Daniel

Donna & John

Click here to vote!

Here at Ever After we’ve had a very busy 2010, and a good one at that. Early on in the year we had our training weekend in Wales, which turned out to be a bit of an adventure with all the snow around. A few weeks later we were named as a finalist in the EventDV Top 25 of Hottest and Most Influential Event Filmmakers in the World, which had me literally jumping for joy.Then in May we crossed the Irish Sea for a stunning and memorable wedding at the Adare Manor Hotel in Ireland. July took us to Florence in Italy for another amazing wedding where with had the honour of working with the fabulous Joe Simon. In August I was invited to speak about Short Form Wedding Films at the anual WEVA Expo, the biggest convention for our industry worldwide in Orlando, Florida. And on top of that, while at the convention, we also won our second WEVA Creative Excellence Award for a Bridal Elegance shoot we filmed earlier in the year. We finished that trip to the United States with a short visit to some good friends on Cape Cod in Massachusetts to celebrate our 9th wedding anniversary. Finally last week, we were in Vienna to film an engagement shoot for a lovely couple from Singapore. That trip was no doubt unforgettable too as we almost didn’t make it there with our flight from Heathrow being cancelled due to snow (which was solved by a 30 hour trip which included a long drive down to Dover, a ferry, another cancelled flight from Brussels and long delays). And in between the weddings here at home in the UK have kept us rather occupied too.
So what has 2011 in store for us? Well, in January we’ll be jetting off again, this time to film a wedding in Florida, followed by another convention, In[Focus] in New Orleans. After that, we’ve got a busy diary already with plenty of bookings, so if you want us to film your wedding next year, get in touch as soon as possible. Don’t forget, we only take on a limited number of weddings each year so we can keep our standards as high as possible.

Now to finish the year, one more video clip to share. Earlier in the year, we already showed you a trailer to this wedding. Now it’s time for the highlights to Clare and Matthew’s wedding.

Clare & Matt from EverAfterVideos on Vimeo.

Here at Ever After we wish you all a magical 2011! May all your dreams and wishes come true!

Next up: Elizabeth and Philip! Here’s a wedding I’m unlikely to ever forget, first ever wedding where the bride invited 2 donkeys! Elizabeth is quite the animal lover and loved the idea of a petting zoo, originally she wanted an elephant, but that didn’t seem quite feasible. So the next choice was donkeys, Jack and Del Boy, who were groomed to perfection for the big day and proved to be quite popular with the guests.
Elizabeth and Philip’s wedding was truly beautiful: 2 of the sweetest people you’ll ever meet, a lovely venue (Gaynes Park in Essex), perfect weather, … And we had the pleasure of working with Alison and Stephen from Purvis-Gisborne Photography again. You can check out some photos of Elizabeth and Philip’s wedding on the Purvis-Gisborne Blog. I hope you enjoy the highlights from their wedding film.

Elizabeth & Philip from EverAfterVideos on Vimeo.

And now for a little extra treat. If you venture over to our Ever After Facebook page, you’ll get a glimpse of what we were up to yesterday in the North East. We’ve got a little flavour to share from Florence and Michael’s wedding at St Godric’s Church in Durham and a reception at Jesmond Dene House in Newcastle. It was a beautiful but freezing cold day, luckily not hampered by any snow. And I just want to give a quick shout out to Ian from Pacific Studios, who was more than a joy to work with yesterday and to the florist Diana Kaye, who put together a stunning bouquet made entirely from Lilies of the Valley (which smelled amazing)

The last few days of 2010, and we’re in the Christmas spirit here at Ever After, in the sense that we’ll be sharing quite a few more videos with you before the end of the year!

First up this week: Lara and Tissa! Lara can best me described as the giddiest bride we’ve ever had and I love her for it, she was just so adorable! And Tissa, well, he was one of the sweetest grooms we’ve ever had, planning a bunch of little surprises like an ice cream van and Chinese lanterns for Lara on their wedding day. Their ceremony took place at St Michael’s Church in beautiful village of Hathersage in the Peak District (some of you may have heard of this church as it’s the place where the grave of Little John lies). The reception was at the Sheffield Hilton, making a nice contrast going from rural to urban in one day. This lucky couple didn’t just get one wedding day! A few days after their wedding day here in sunny England, they flew to Sri Lanka for more wedding celebrations with Tissa’s family.

Lara & Tissa from EverAfterVideos on Vimeo.

And on a side note: We have some exciting plans for next month. We’ll be having a contest featuring the 5 most popular wedding videos we’ve featured on this blog this year (based on page views and comments). Among the prices: a £200 John Lewis voucher and a £75 Amazon gift certificate. So stay tuned for the details of the contest coming up in January!

Despite the fact that we are based in Sheffield, we rarely cover a wedding in our own neck of the woods. This year was a bit of exception. First in line were Amy and Nick. Although they currently live down south, Amy’s family is from Sheffield and she came home to get married. And when I say home, I really do mean home, as the reception was held in the beautiful gardens of her parents’ house.

The days before the wedding featured several torrential downpours, making the whole set up of the marquee a bit trickier than it was supposed. But then the day itself was perfect. Amy looked simply beautiful, her dad wiping a tear away as she came down the stairs.

The evening entertainment was provided by QEII, a really amazing Queen Tribute band who rocked the house (well, marquee). They were superb!

Also, a quick shout out to Rosemary and Andrew, the lovely photographers at Chilli Pepper Images who we worked with that day.

The Wedding of Amy and Nick from EverAfterVideos on Vimeo.

When I started in this business back in 2002, it seemed rather hard to find other women doing this job. It very much looked like a male-dominated industry, despite the fact that our product is aimed at a largely female market. Usually when going to conventions or anything else industry related, people would always talk to Niels and seem to treat me as a “plus 1”, Niels was always quickly to tell them that I was the driving force behind this business. Even at this year’s IoV Convention, it was a challenge to find more than 5 women at any one moment and I still felt that many businesses at the tradeshow didn’t even bother trying to get my attention. So it seemed that not much had changed in 8 years.
But then it helps to look a bit further and you will find that some of the most amazing event film makers in the world are women! And then 2 of those amazing women, Jennifer Moon and Reagan Zugelter, got together, and established “POSH” with the aim of connecting, educating and inspiring women visual artists.

“Because of their age long training in human relations—for that is what feminine intuition really is—women have a special contribution to make to any group enterprise.” – Margaret Mead

42 dedicated women filmmakers and photographers.
Five sparkling days in the Bahamas.
One powerful message: We Create.

Professional event filmmakers and photographers from across the globe gathered recently on a cruise to the Bahamas for POSH 2010, an educational workshop and retreat for women. Inspired by their shared experiences in an industry dominated by males, the group spontaneously decided to use their creative gifts to craft a short film illustrating the positive power and passion of women in the film industry.

Shot on location at POSH 2010, “We Create” was directed by Maura Coleman-Murray and Kara Jensen, filmed by Maribeth Ratajczyk and Luiza Perkowska, and edited by Meg Simone. All 42 POSH 2010 attendees collaborated on the piece.

We Create from POSH on Vimeo.

Last week was a busy one for the Ever After team. On Wednesday and Thursday the IOV had their yearly convention ProVideo at the Ricoh Arena in Coventry, in fact it was the 25th anniversary of the IOV. We ran 2 seminars, both on some of my favourite subjects: audio and vintage lenses. After our Thursday seminar, we travelled further down south towards Surrey to meet up with Emma and James.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a livelier and upbeat church rehearsal! Emma and James were clearly eager to get married and looking forward to a day of celebrations. An October wedding always carries the risk of rain with it, but Emma and James has a perfectly gorgeous autumn day with the rain holding off until late at night. After a their service in the idyllic St Mary’s Church in Datchet, the reception was held at the Wenthworth Club, Viginia Waters in Surrey. Karin, the coordinator, made sure that every little detail was perfect and indeed it was! The team at the Wenthworth Club was an example of efficiency and service. Kenan, the banqueting manager made sure we were looked after.

Magaret and her team from the ChairDressing Company together with Firebird Events made the room look exquisite as you’ll notice in the clip below. We worked alongside David and Ann from WardPhotoArt who were the photographers of the day. It was a pleasure working alongside them and I had a great time chatting in the down time. Sylvia on the other hand was very busy editing the Same Day Edit which we screened during the band’s break.

And now without further ado, have a look at the Same Day Edit:

Emma & James: Same Day Edit from EverAfterVideos on Vimeo.

On a separate note, we just received an email from ‘the Bridal Magazine’ to let us know we’ve been shortlisted for their annual ‘Wedding Videographer of the Year’-award. To be quite honest, we had no idea anyone had put us forward, so whoever you were : Thank you!

Of course now we need some votes, so if you think we’re worthy, please vote for us:

Quick blog update, as we’ve got a busy week ahead of us! Between a few editing deadlines, we’re also off to the IOV ProVideo Show where Niels will be giving 2 seminars and then at the end of the week we have another wedding to film. Sleep is optional this week.

Last weekend we were up in Scotland, filming the wedding of Donna and John at Comlongon Castle near Dumfries. And we’ve got a Same Day Edit to share of this one. I’d just like to say, I loved Donna’s dress by Jenny Packham, it was sheer old Hollywood glamour. We also had a great time working together with Ken and Janet from Team Thomson Photography and Laura Kerr, make up artist from Blusha, who was amazing too.

I hope you’ll enjoy their Same Day Edit!

Donna and John, SDE at Comlongon Castle, Scotland from EverAfterVideos on Vimeo.