An amateur wedding video on your phone

Wedding photos and video are an important record of the day you officially decided to join your lives together. They're memories you'll come back to years later.

Your wedding photos and video matter.

Even so, it's tempting to think that filming an amateur wedding video on a phone can't be that difficult. You've filmed plenty of videos on your phone before, and some of them turned out perfectly well. You don't need a cinematic wedding film with a storyline. A simple documentary recording will do. You can always edit it yourselves later.

And in one sense, you're right. Pointing a phone in roughly the right direction and pressing record is something a three-year-old could manage.

At a wedding, though, that's a trap — both for you and for the poor soul who agrees to your idea and accepts responsibility for the result.

Even with the best intentions, the video may not work out. And although you already expect it to look amateur, it can still end up being completely unusable.

You'll be disappointed.

Very disappointed.

Because you can't repeat your wedding ceremony just because the video went wrong.

If you still insist on having someone make an amateur recording of your wedding, let's play a little game called “find the volunteer”.

The first obvious candidate is your wedding coordinator.

Except your coordinator has an entirely different job during the ceremony. They're watching everything that's happening, dealing with problems, coordinating people and suppliers and, at some destination weddings, interpreting the ceremony or even keeping random passers-by from wandering straight through it.

They need to concentrate on their actual job.

They can't be in two places at once.

If they're expected to film at the same time, they may have little choice but to put the phone down somewhere, leave it recording and hope that it's pointing at you.

The phone can fall over. The sun can shine straight into the lens. Wind can overwhelm the sound. The picture can shake. Or the angle can be so spectacularly unflattering that, despite having had a perfect wedding ceremony, you'll wish you'd never seen the footage.

So perhaps the witnesses could do it.

Except they're supposed to pay attention, take part in the ceremony and avoid disrupting it.

They can't exactly run around with a phone filming a ceremony they're supposed to be part of.

Which leaves one of your wedding guests.

Or perhaps a random passer-by.

Ignoring for a moment the possibility that the passer-by could simply walk off with your phone, their motivation is unlikely to be particularly high.

We can probably agree that this isn't a serious solution.

If you do have a wedding guest who's willing to accept responsibility for your wedding video — including the risk that something goes wrong and that you'll never quite forgive them for it — congratulations.

You have what you wanted.

Unfortunately, the problem isn't quite over yet.

Your professional photographer may not be delighted either if your guest spends the entire ceremony moving around with a phone and repeatedly getting in the way.

So you may end up compromising the professional wedding photos you actually paid for.

That's why we recommend hiring a professional videographer.

A wedding video isn't just something to post for friends on social media. It's primarily for you, and it'll stay with you for the rest of your life.

It makes sense for your wedding to be filmed by somebody who can give the recording their full attention, knows where to stand and how to move during the ceremony, has the right equipment and, most importantly:

it is their job and their responsibility.

Not the coordinator's.

Not the witnesses'.

Not the guest you persuaded to “just hold the phone”.

And if you really don't want a professional videographer, there's still one simple alternative:

set up your own tripod and film the amateur video yourselves.