Syrian Weddings

[Steve Bleasdale]

Hi Guys
Before I book a Syrian wedding and finalise a price and contract, can anyone tell me the pitfalls and unexpected? She seems a bit vague as if hiding something from me!! steve

[Chris Harding]

Hi Steve

You need to find out if they are Christian, Jewish or Muslim first of all. If they are Christian and it's a Westernised ceremony and reception then you shouldn't have any issues.

Jewish weddings if traditional do have pitfalls as to the amount of footage they expect and quite often think that 6:00pm to midnight receptions will yield 6 hours of footage so be very clear what they will get!! However most will book a Jewish videographer from their community but Nigel here does do Jewish weddings and he can talk you thru it.

If it's Muslim Syrian I personally would run the other way as fast as I could!! But that's just me !! Too many bad experiences in previous years similar to poor Tariq here so I politely inform them I am booked.

Chris

[Steve Bleasdale]

Cheers Chris just as I thought I will give it a swerve...

[Jim Michael]

Does no one build a timeline? How can you know your project requirements without a timeline? The bride has to give you a schedule as to what should occur and when else you can't know if there might be a conflict. For instance, if there is some important activity occurring at both the bride's and groom's residences and it is important to film both of them, and they occur simultaneously, you need two people on the job.

[Danny O'Neill]

Did you just turn them down as we've had a Dana get in touch about a Syrian wedding which we may have to turn down.

[Noa Put]

Be very cautious about these kind of weddings if you don't have any experience with them so try to drag as much as info possible out of them about the wedding day planning. What you describe as being vague I have encountered too many times, it's not that they don't want to tell you, they just consider everything as obvious and not worth mentioning, I have had occasions, not Syrian weddings, where they said that's it's going to be a very small greeting ceremony, not that important, in the morning and eventually it lasted 45 minutes and afterwards they asked if I shot it all as they wanted the whole thing, or they ask after the wedding to review the footage first so they can request changes, even with a note in the signed quote which mentions that I don't do that they still reply like "but I thought that is always included".

Last year I had a Indian/African wedding and there was a "small" Indian ceremony planned halfway the day, "very simple" the bride said, "it's a simple ceremony guided by a Indian priest and we do some rounds around a small fire, probably the guests will stay on their seats, you can just use a small part in the edit". Afterwards it was a one hour full ceremony and all the guests attended, luckily I was smart enough to mic the groom and priest and had 2 camera's running continuously and after the wedding the groom called and said "We decided to have the full ceremony on dvd, can you arrange that pls?" :D

Most important is to make very long and clear agreements that they need to sign, I have done a Indian wedding some time ago and my quote looks totally different from a typical Belgian wedding, I literally spell out everything what is and is not covered, even it it sounds stupid, because even then they can "misunderstand".

I only take on these weddings now if the wedding is like Chris mentioned, Westernized, because I have had so many bad experiences in other cases I decided not to deal with them anymore.

[Steve Bleasdale]

Originally Posted by Danny O'Neill

Did you just turn them down as we've had a Dana get in touch about a Syrian wedding which we may have to turn down.

Yes Danny it was a Dana... Something weird going on?

[Danny O'Neill]

The vague email just sounds like shopping around.

[Chris Harding]

Hi Steve

Smart move ..I think you would have been sorry if you had been wrapped up in that one. Plenty of more fish in the sea!!

Just reading posts by our friend here Tariq and all the issues he has convinced me quite quickly that unless it's a totally Westernised wedding I simply don't do it. I have quite a few Indian friend here and they tell me that ceremonies "back home in India" have fierce competition locally and videographers will often do a 3 or 5 day wedding there for the equivalent of a mere US$300.00 for the whole lot so it's natural for couples to expect the same "value for money" in their adopted Country.

Chris

[Steve Bleasdale]

Cheers Chris, all the best Danny..