Have you ever heard of a surprise wedding? That is what Jessie asked me the first time we spoke on the phone, and I want you to know I guessed wrong twice before she explained it.
My first thought was that she meant an elopement. My second was that one of them was surprising the other, which happens more than you would think. Neither one was it. Jessie and Jay knew exactly when they were getting married. Nobody else did.
What A Surprise Wedding Actually Is
Here was the plan, and it was airtight. Everyone in their lives believed that Jessie and Jay were throwing a party, and that afterward the two of them were flying off to the Caribbean by themselves to get married. Friends and family showed up to that party dressed for a party. Secretly, they had arranged for a friend to marry them right there in the middle of it.
So every single person in the room walked in thinking they were going to eat some food and go home, and walked out having been at a wedding.
A VFW Post, Flowers, And A Tank
And believe me, this was a cool party. They took a VFW post in Corrigan, Texas and turned the whole thing into a wedding venue: flowers, colors, a cake, the works. It also has a tank out front. Now, technically the tank was already at the VFW and had nothing to do with the wedding, but it was still a tank, and I am not going to pretend that did not improve the day.
I have never partied at a wedding in a VFW hall before. I hope it is not the last time.
Filming Something Nobody Can Rehearse
Here is the part that matters if you shoot weddings. A normal wedding has a schedule and a rehearsal, and both of those exist so that everybody, including you, knows what is coming. This had neither. There is no rehearsing a moment whose entire value is that the people in it have no idea.
Which means you get exactly one take of every reaction in the building, and you cannot ask anybody to do it again, and if you are pointed the wrong way you have simply lost it. So you stop trying to cover the event and you start covering faces. You give up the wide safety shot. You watch the doorway rather than the couple, because the couple already knows.
The best thing I got all day is a shot of two women coming through a door, having just been told to come see a special picture, and realising in real time what they are actually looking at. One of them says out loud, to nobody, are you getting married. Jessie’s mom seeing her daughter in that dress for the first time is the whole film in about four seconds.
Who Filmed It
Filmed at the VFW hall in Corrigan, Texas. Ashley Stineman helped me shoot it, which on a day like this is not a luxury, it is the only way you come home with the reactions at all. There is also a page for this one over on FilmStrong.
Interested in having me film your wedding? Please contact me!