What is your most embarrassing wedding moment as a videographer?

[Edgar Vasiluk]

I'm sure it has happened to everyone at least once, so don't be embarrassed again and share your story! ;)

Mine was when I had to stop speeches at a reception just to change tapes; I knew that everyone of the 250 guests was looking at me in total silence for 10 seconds!!!

I didn't have any alternative because they went over 60mins and the bride wanted to edit the wedding herself, so I had to keep everything....


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[Kelly Huffaker]

Mine was when I was trying to follow the bride down the isle backwards with my Glidecam and 7d, and I tripped landing straight on my back. Everybody started laughing. It also didn't help that the pastor said, "Oooh, that's gotta hurt!" Then when I quickly got back to my feet, he also said, "And he's okay everybody!" The crowd got up and started cheering for me. I felt mortified!!!!

[John Knight]

Mine was when the reception was dragging on and on and nobody was prompting the couple to get up and do the first dance (to iPod). Utterly incompetent MC. I went over and mentioned to him it was 10pm and the dance was scheduled for 8:30pm. Next minute, he's yelling over the microphone....

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, THE VIDEOGRAPHER HAS REQUESTED THAT SALLY AND DAVID NOW DO THE DANCE. THIS IS SO THE VIDEOGRAPHER CAN FINISH UP FOR THE EVENING. COULD EVERYONE GATHER AROUND THE DANCEFLOOR SO THE VIDEOGRAPHER CAN FILM THE FIRST DANCE.

B**STARD! I could have crawled into a hole and died.

[Edgar Vasiluk]

Originally Posted by John Knight

Mine was when the reception was dragging on and on and nobody was prompting the couple to get up and do the first dance (to iPod). Utterly incompetent MC. I went over and mentioned to him it was 10pm and the dance was scheduled for 8:30pm. Next minute, he's yelling over the microphone....

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, THE VIDEOGRAPHER HAS REQUESTED THAT SALLY AND DAVID NOW DO THE DANCE. THIS IS SO THE VIDEOGRAPHER CAN FINISH UP FOR THE EVENING. COULD EVERYONE GATHER AROUND THE DANCEFLOOR SO THE VIDEOGRAPHER CAN FILM THE FIRST DANCE.

B**STARD! I could have crawled into a hole and died.

Wow John, that was embarrassign...I think he said that because it was funny especially after couple of drinks...

[Chris Harding]

Ah!!! MC's, the great organisers of the reception and keeping everything on track!!

In February I really needed a toilet break so, as normal I asked the MC when the bride would be tossing the bouquet..."Around midnight.. just before she leaves" was the response so off I go to find the Gents and I'm standing there quietly enjoying a moment of peace when I hear the DJ playing the "Single Girl" song which only means ONE thing ...they were going to do the bouquet ....2 hours early.

Now, there is no way you can stop your current activity and rush back so I just had to complete the task at hand and on my return (probably a total return trip of less than 2 minutes) the bouquet was already lying on the table at the seat of the girl who caught it and it was all over. Seriously they must have done the entire thing in under 30 seconds!!!

The bouquet toss was not in the final DVD, of course, and the bride also said nothing about it's omission!!

Still pretty embarassing to actually miss a complete event!!!

Chris

[Daniel Roberts]

It seems the most embarrassing moments are the direct result of a breakdown in communication. This was the case with me in one of my first weddings.

The wedding was held in a posh officers club on a local Army barracks. Taking the time and care to make sure of all the details, I scheduled an hour and a half lead for the time stated for the ceremony. It was a simple civil ceremony held outside the club. The problems arose when I entered the army base and was told to identify myself and the reason for being there. I clearly stated my purpose as a wedding videographer for a wedding held at the club, gave my identification, and a list of the equipment I had with me. The guard on duty, who was a really kind guy, acknowledged that he did indeed know about the wedding , but did not see my name on the entry list for the guests. Apparently that detail had been overlooked by the mother of the bride. To complicated the situation, both the mother of the bride, the bride and groom both had their cellular phones off. After an hour of time, and repeated tries to get ahold of them, we finally were able to call the mother. She informed us that she had just received the guards repeated messages when she turned on her phone after the ceremony.

Needless to say, I arrived after the ceremony had already taken place. Even as the situation had been explained to the bride and groom, it was rather difficult being "that guy" in a room of people who had very clearly noticed your absence at the ceremony.

The remainder of the night went off without a hitch, and the resulting film was very well received by the family. However, since then, I always arrive 2 hours early of the mentioned time, and shy away from weddings that require passing guards with M16s.

[Craig Terott]

Mine was saying "you must be the mom" to an older Bridesmaid.

I'm so frickin careful now. lol

[Alex Pineyro]

Well, I have several funny (read embarrasing) stories, including ripped slacks, non-sense addressing from a band leader in front of everybody or a priest pushing me on the processional.

But the most embarrasing moment must be one almost 18 years ago, on a wedding. During the grand entrance I´ve noted that all the venue lights were on, so I called a waiter and asked if the lights may be dimmed or turned off during the first dance to get a little romantic atmosphere.

The boy agreed and went to the circuit box to switch off the lights. As he was taking too much time, I went there to see what was going on. Just as I approached him, he turned off the breakers feeding the entire band!!! Absolute silence followed and everyone and I mean EVERYONE peeled their eyes at me like if I was the one who pulled the cord off.

Only thing I came with was to point speechless at the waiter, who also was paralized in terror, with his fingers still on the switches. Everyone laughed then.

Luckily the couple was so happy that they just waited smiling until the band leader turned all of his equipment back on to dance their first song, and from there it was smooth sailing.

I hope someone here tops this one.

Cheers!

[Ryan Czaplinski]

Originally Posted by John Knight

Mine was when the reception was dragging on and on and nobody was prompting the couple to get up and do the first dance (to iPod). Utterly incompetent MC. I went over and mentioned to him it was 10pm and the dance was scheduled for 8:30pm. Next minute, he's yelling over the microphone....

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, THE VIDEOGRAPHER HAS REQUESTED THAT SALLY AND DAVID NOW DO THE DANCE. THIS IS SO THE VIDEOGRAPHER CAN FINISH UP FOR THE EVENING. COULD EVERYONE GATHER AROUND THE DANCEFLOOR SO THE VIDEOGRAPHER CAN FILM THE FIRST DANCE.

B**STARD! I could have crawled into a hole and died.

WOW. That's seriously uncalled for behavior by the MC. Also highly inconsiderate of many other people who have probably been there forever waiting for the main events to take place.

I luckily haven't had one yet that was really bad. I try to communicate with the MC and other important peeps before the services happen. From there I really am hands off and let things happen as it happens just so, as far as liability is concerned, that I don't interfere with anything that doesn't have anything to do with my part of the job in the evening.

I've definitely had MCs run late, but not too horrible. They've been fairly responsible.

The only embarrassing thing I could think of was something that happened to a couple I was filming while they were cutting the cake. They went over to a home made multi-tiered cake held up by columns and I don't know why they went to cut the cake near one of the columns, but I guess you can figure out what happened in that the other tiers fell over. Others rushed to save the 2 top tiers and it was okay.

It was a very small wedding though and their MC didn't even show up, so they were using a boom box. They won a contest at a Wedding show for free DJ services and the guy didn't even show up. I think that was seriously crummy.

[Peter Manojlovic]

I was freelancing for a local company. Use his equipment. It's older stuff, but i'm used to dealing with the drawbacks.

Two bars on the battery indicator went to dead in two minutes.Battery died down during the processional. It was a one man shoot with no b-roll.
I was able to pop a battery in, but lost the mother giving away the bride..I felt so awful.

[Warren Kawamoto]

I was setting up my projector at a reception right before everyone arrived. As I taped down my cables, my pants ripped from front to back at the crotch! I called my wife and asked her to bring me an extra pair of pants ASAP. I stood calmly against the wall, unable to do anything as the breeze blew my backside.....

[Peter Manojlovic]

Oh yeah Warren...

I had that happen to me too....Man, sometimes you forget the stuff...

[Warren Kawamoto]

About 15 years ago, I was playing back a SDE at a large reception. My audio system was plugged into the wall. A water fountain for the buffet was also plugged into the same circuit. As I was playing back the SDE, the water fountain would turn on every 15 seconds. For some reason, whenever the fountain went on, it would shut off my audio system for a few seconds! Realizing what the problem was in mid playback, I scurried in the dark to pull the plug of the water fountain. I tripped over the leg of my projection cart, which spun the projector. So now I had a picture being projected on the wall instead of the screen, no sound, and 400 people looking at me, wondering what the heck was going on....

[Jaron Tauch]

Freelancing for a big box studio, had to do a photo montage at the reception... Set everything up as normal, popped the dvd in the player to find out said studio gave me the WRONG COUPLES SLIDESHOW!! Totally different couple came on the projector screen.. Awesome... Bride in tears, groom wants to kill me, brides mother wants to kill me, I'm on the phone completely unloading on the owner of the company and video manager for being so stupid and to try to do something to unf*ck the situation. That was fun!

Another day, where I decided to wear grey slacks instead of my usual black ones I spilled an entire cup of steaming hot coffee down the front of my slacks while opening the door to the hotel to shoot the gals getting ready... Had to greet everyone looking like I just peed myself and completely stinking of coffee..

Ha, done the "You must be the mother" to the older bridesmaid too.....

Moral of story, always check dvd of projection when working for another company prior to showing and keep a spare change of clothes in the car too! Also, even if your sure it's mom, she's always one of the bridesmaids ;)

[Noa Put]

Actually my father told me a very embarrassing moment he experienced, he films weddings for almost 30 years now (he's 70 years old) and 2 years ago he got a call from a couple who wanted to hire him, they had no time to meet first as their wedding was only 4 weeks away but they had seen work from him and they trusted it would be ok. The day of the wedding my father shows up and sees the bride for the first time wearing her wedding dress, he looks down at her belly noticing it was "bigger" then normal and the first thing he says was: "you better hurry up" with a big grin on his face thinking she was almost ready to pop when the bride said: "what do you mean?" :D