Wedding Tip : First Dance
You’re first dance is an awesome moment. There’s nothing cooler than watching to people in the center of a dance floor starring into each others souls and soaking up the moment with their closest friends and family watching. From the perspective of the event cinematographer this can be some of the most dramatic footage of the day. All too often the MC may direct friends and family to join on the dance floor and take away from the moment though.
It is important to remember that in order to make a powerful edit of this dance, we require a full dance with no couples joining in. We are focusing on the right moments and gathering close ups, medium shots, and wide shots as well as reactions from your family and friends to put together this masterpiece. 2-3 minutes of filmming this dance will just cut it. By asking others to join in (sometimes after less than a minute of dancing) we lose potential shots that would have made this dance so much better. So to summarize we suggest the following tips during your first dance.
- Tell your MC that you would prefer to dance the entire first dance alone
- While dancing, its always better to remember to rotate rather than rocking back and forth and pointing in the same direction
- If you haven’t yet, practice your dance a few times just for fun. It will help you feel more natural when you really dance at your wedding
- Try to make sure you stay in the center as much as you can, unless you have a special choreographed dance that forces you to be elsewhere
- If you have a choreographed dance, keep in mind that it will be extremely difficult to get closeups for any length of time and make sure that you practice it untill its second nature. Choreographed dances that are not mastered look unnatural and uncomfortable so if you can’t get it down, revert back to a natural slow dance that you can be comfotable with.
- Under no circumstances should you allow any distractions like photo montages during your first dance. This moment is for you only, hence the name “First Dance”
- Make sure your dance is at least 2.5 minutes, if not longer so it can be filmed properly.
- Don’t get nervous, just block everyone out and own the moment
3 Ways For Brides To Look Good On Film
International award winning photographer G.E. Masana invited Adam Forgione to give some advice on how brides can look great on camera. The post includes a lot more than just Adam speaking entitled “How To Look Gorgeous in Your Wedding Photos and Video – the Secrets Revealed”.
Planning Your Timeline
We would like to share our experiences with brides and grooms to help their day more enjoyable and better planned.
It is very common that brides and grooms already have their timeline setup before they hire us. Sometimes it works out perfect and sometimes it is not so perfect. The important thing to remember is factoring in “worst-case scenarios” which actually happen quite often.
Here is an example :
3pm – church ceremony – full mass
6:30pm – cocktail hour
7:30 – reception
this looks great, so the bride and groom decide they want to go to a cool location for creative photo and cinema shots about 20 minutes away. here is the reality of this timeline
3pm – ceremony begins
3:50 – ceremony ends and receiving line begins
4:10 – receiving line ends and bride/groom prepare to walk outside church
4:20 – bride and groom get brought back into church a some photos with photographer
4:35 – bride and groom start to head to limo after church photos but get stopped by more guests congratulating
4:40 – limo leaves church
5:05 – limo arrives at photo/cinema location for shoot but gets caught in 5 mins traffic
5:10 – bridal party still taking their time getting outr of limo
5:15 – bridal party walks to location
5:20 – photos start after bridal party gets setup for first shot
6:20 – photo session ends and everyone starts to head back to limo
6:30 – after a 5 min walk and 5 mins to get everyone into car the limo leaves
6:50 – limo pulls up to reception location (cocktail hour has started 20 mins ago) – the matre d and bridal assistant greet the bride/groom and take them to their bridal suite
7:00 – family picture havent even started yet and everyone is scattered in the cockatil hour – it will take some time to gather all family members needed. Bride and Groom will probably not make cocktail hour now because they have to start family pictures.
so you see how quickly things get delayed. This is very common during a wedding day. The best advice I could give is to ask your cinematographer, photographer, and planner what they suggest and tell them your preferences. ask yourself these questions :
Do you want to be at cocktail hour – if not this will buy you extra time
Do you need a receiving line – this could save you 15-20 mins possibly
Do you need an additional location, or would you cansider a closer location for photo/cinema shoot
Maybe you have the option of having the ceremony earlier, or the cocktail hour starting later.
Hope this was informative. Good luck in planning your wedding. Feel free to contact Adam Forgione at Pennylane Productions for any advice. Ill be happy to steer you in the right direction whether your interested in booking us or not. Have a wonderful happy wedding.
Adam Forgione
Owner/Director of Pennylane Productions