Although Mid-July prides ourself in being a “low maintenance” Michigan wedding videographer, but we still put an enormous amount of effort into pre-planning your wedding day. Check out some of the things we do beforehand!
The Technicals
About a month before your wedding, we usually ask for:
- Itineraries
- Locations
- Coverage times
- Vendor contacts
- Emergency contacts
Your itinerary is a vital part of your day! We don’t mind a simple itinerary via text, nor to we mind a fully flushed-out excel spreadsheet from a wedding planner.
We’ll check (and double check) locations, venues, and addresses to ensure accuracy. It’s important for us to know our starting location, to make sure we arrive on time to capture the right thing! As long as we start where you and your photographer(s) are, we’ll be able stick with the flow of events, even if our itinerary is outdated or thrown out (trust me, it’s happened).
You’re more than welcome to send coordinates, Apple/Google Maps pins, or share your phone’s location for tricky destinations! Those come in handy for remote destinations or confusing address schemes (I’m looking at you, identical ski lodge condos without numbers).
With your photographers, DJs, and other venues, we’ll often reach out beforehand to introduce ourselves. It can often save time when explaining why we need an audio output on a DJ’s speakers, or asking permission to fly a drone at your reception venue.
The Equipment
The equipment is a complex and sensitive part of our job as wedding videographers. It takes a lot of learning, patience, and preparation to make our equipment work as seamlessly as it appears— it’s not magic that everything just *works*.
The day before your wedding, you’ll find us:
- Pre-building camera rigs, like our gimbals or cinema cameras
- Testing cameras, mics, lenses, and memory cards
- Charging dozens of batteries of all different types
- Cleaning lenses and camera sensors
- Formatting memory cards
- Packing bags & cases
We also bring duplicates of as many things as possible— camera bodies, lenses, microphones, cables. Everything you see likely has a duplicate out of sight.
Yeah, it’s a lot. But it’s certainly necessary to make sure we save surprises for your Best Man’s speech, and not your wedding video!
Still looking for a videographer?
Don’t leave your wedding video up to your nephew with an iPhone. Make sure it’s captured right!
We do wedding films anywhere in Michigan, and we call Grand Rapids home! Doesn’t matter if you’re in Traverse City or Marquette— we’ll come to you!
