This happy ending started at a bird hunt – we are in Texas after all – where a woman named Michelle, with a fiery personality and two young boys, meets Jerry, a quiet man with a killer mustache and a daughter. Both of them with prior marriages, both a bit jaded about the thought of love, and both trying their hardest to be good parents to their children. Was it love at first sight? Not even close, but they did give each other a chance to enjoy one another’s company.
Slowly, days of friendship turned into months of companionship, and love slowly began to slip back into their lives. They were both looking for someone that would support and respect them in a way that they never experienced in their first marriages. One day, Michelle hit a deer with her car – this is Texas, remember? – and Jerry fixed it without her even asking. It was then, in this country act of kindness, that Michelle knew that she had found the man she was looking for. For Jerry, the man who swore he would never get married again, things moved a bit slower. But over their months spent together, and after seeing how Michelle loved his daughter so well, he came around.
Both Michelle and Jerry found someone special. Someone who was supportive, kind, and loved them with all their faults included. They both decided that life together was better than apart, and they were ready to be married.
It was around this point that I stepped into the picture to film their wedding. Was it traditional, stuffy, and black tie? Not at all. It was authentically them, with a cowboy boot on every foot, a cake shaped like a dippin’ can, and a ceremony under the Texas sunset as their children, family, and friends watched. Did everything go as planned? Nope, one of the boys fell in the venue fountain after the ceremony and had to switch outfits. Was this day perfectly, and uniquely Michelle and Jerry’s? You bet.
A Venue In The Middle Of Nowhere
The film opens on a drone shot, and I want you to notice what is not in it, because there is no skyline, no highway, no neighboring building, nothing. Just a long white venue sitting in the middle of a couple hundred acres of green with a pond next to it and trees running off in every direction, which is honestly my favorite kind of place to shoot, because whenever you have that much open space you have complete control over what ends up in your background. I don’t have to hide a parking lot. I don’t have to angle around a dumpster. I can put the couple anywhere I want and the frame stays clean.
Getting Ready
The morning is the part of a wedding day that most people never see, and it is usually the most relaxed footage I get all day. Hair going up. Makeup going on. Somebody’s uncle standing around telling a story nobody asked for. This particular getting ready room had one of those long mirror walls with the salon chairs lined up, so I could shoot down the row and get four or five people in one frame without ever asking anybody to move.
And then there is the guys’ side, which is always a completely different energy, because the groomsmen are usually sitting around in whatever shirt they woke up in until roughly forty minutes before the ceremony. Which is great for me! Those relaxed, nobody-is-performing moments are where the real personality lives, and they cut beautifully against all the formal stuff later.
The Vows
Michelle and Jerry both wrote their own, and they are the best audio in the whole film. Michelle’s is the one that gets me. She says the reason she loves him most is because he loves her for who she is and not for what she does, and then she lays out both versions of herself so there is no confusion about it: the good days when she is all dolled up and laughing, and the bad days when she is hollering on the couch in her yoga pants with messy hair. That is not a greeting card sentence. That is a real person describing a real marriage before it has even started.
Jerry opens with three jokes, because of course he does. He promises to always leave his spit cups around the house. He promises to mysteriously take three hours to run one errand. He promises to listen to her advice and usually take it. Then he stops joking and says he vows to be her tear wiper on the days it all feels like too much, and the room goes quiet.
And the title of this film comes straight out of Michelle’s vows, at the very end, where she says let us be friends and lovers and grow old disgracefully together. I did not write that. I just got to point a camera at it.
The Toast
One of Michelle’s people gets up and admits, in front of everybody, that she was skeptical of Jerry at first. She says she is protective of Michelle, and then adds that this is not because Michelle can’t hold her own, because anybody who knows her knows you never want to get on her bad side. Then she explains what changed her mind, which is that Jerry’s kind and easygoing nature reminded her of her own husband, and she landed on this: they are not a match because they are the same, they are a match because they are opposites, and he balances her out.
Here’s the deal with toasts. Most of them are unusable, and I say that with love. But every so often somebody stands up and explains the couple better than the couple can explain themselves, and whenever that happens you build the whole middle of the film around it, which is exactly what happened here.
Cowboy Boots And A Copenhagen Cake
The groom’s cake was painted to look like a can of Copenhagen Long Cut, sitting on a slab of raw wood, with “Jerry + Michelle 11-21-15” written across the lid in gold. That is the whole wedding in one dessert. Nobody was trying to have somebody else’s wedding, and honestly that makes my job so much easier, because whenever a couple leans all the way into who they actually are, I get details to shoot instead of decorations to shoot.
Dancing With The Kids
This is a blended family, which means the reception dances were not just a first dance and a couple of parent dances, they were the actual point. Michelle danced with her son. Jerry danced with his mother. The kids were on the floor all night. If you are filming a wedding for a couple who are both bringing children into it, do not treat the kids as background, because they are as much a part of the story as the couple is, and the family is genuinely being made in front of you.
The Last Hour Of Light
Everything in the back third of this film was shot in about forty minutes. We pulled Michelle and Jerry out of the reception, walked them into the field behind the venue, and shot until the sun was gone. That is the trade I will make every single time, and I tell every couple I work with the same thing: give me twenty minutes away from your reception at sunset and I will give you the best images of your entire day.
And then the sun drops behind the treeline and you get the shot the whole day was building to, which is two silhouettes and a cowboy hat against an orange sky. Texas has the best sunsets. I stand by it.
Watch The Highlight Film
The film above is the long one. If you only have four minutes, here is the highlight cut of the same day:
My Wedding Filmmaking Kit
I get asked constantly what I shoot weddings on, so here it is. Keep in mind this film is from 2015 and my kit has changed a lot since then, so this is what I reach for now, not a list of exactly what was in the bag that day.
- INSANE lowlight main camera on Amazon
- My favorite wide angle lens with AF on Amazon
- Ultra-versatile medium lens with AF on Amazon
- Best drone ever on Amazon
- Filters for the best drone ever on Amazon
- BEEFY electronic gimbal on Amazon
- Fantastic video monopod on Amazon
- Ridiculously tiny audio recorder and mic on Amazon
- Prism for fancy in-camera effects on Amazon
- FAST video editing laptop on Amazon
- Indestructible camera case on Amazon
- Light & sturdy travel tripod on Amazon
- Portable LED Lighting Kit on Amazon
The whole list lives on my favorite wedding filmmaking gear page, and everything you see here was color graded with my own WhoisMatt LUTs.
Where The Music Comes From
A wedding film is at least half music, so this matters more than most people think. These are the three licensing sites I actually use:
- Sound Stripe (use the coupon code “WHOISMATT” for 10% off a yearly or monthly subscription)
- Art List (free extra 2 months when you subscribe using this link)
- Musicbed
Want To Book More Weddings?
If you’re a filmmaker trying to fill a calendar, I put together a free quick tips guide on how to book more wedding film clients, and if you want to go deeper on the editing side, that’s what my wedding film editing course is for. There’s also a Learn Wedding Filmmaking Facebook group full of people doing this same job, and it is free to join.
Interested in having me film your authentic, unique, and awesome wedding? Get in touch!