• He poked a little fun at the groom
• Spoke fondly of the bride
• He told a pretty entertaining story on how he helped Evan stay with Caitlin
• He did not read, but spoke with emotion

Transcript:

Good evening friends and family, I just want to start off by thanking Evan and Caitlin’s parents for making this wonderful day possible. Mr. and Mrs. Mlynarek, I know that Evan didn’t turn out to be the perfect child you hoped for, but you should still be proud of your 21 year old balding son.  Just remember that’s going to be all right because you still have your attractive daughter Hope.

Mr. and Mrs. Alexander you should be very proud of your daughter, you have raised a very beautiful, intelligent and sophisticated woman.

So for those of you that don’t know me my name is James, I’m the best man and it may be hard to believe but I am Asian. This may have shocked and confused many of you, a lot of people including Evan himself would never have guessed four years ago that his best man would be a Korean man from Indiana, but it happened. How did this happen you may ask, well it is a very long and complicated story so I am going to save everyone and give everyone the shorten version.

I have been Evans roommate for the past 3 years and he may not know it but I’m the reason that Evan and Kate are getting married today. During freshmen year he told me he was dating a girl from his home town, he was in Maryland and she was going to school inMichigan. As most people know these long distant relationships don’t last, so being the great friend and best man that I was, every weekend since freshmen year I’ve taken Evan out to dinner and watched a movie with him. Our classmates have constantly made fun of us for going on these so called man dates, now should I be embarrassed about my bromance with Evan? Probably, but at least he was spending time with me instead of chasing after other girls, so you welcome Cate.

So now this is the time in a best man’s speech where I usually embarrass the groom with his crazy and drunken nights in college, believe me I would really want to do this but as most of you know Evan doesn’t really drink, so his parents will be happy to hear that there are not a lot of crazy stories to talk about. So instead I’m going to make an announcement, to all the single ladies in the room, Sam, Charlie, Adam and myself are all currently single and after a couple of drinks we turn into great dancers so please find us on the dance floor. Ryan has a girlfriend, so please stay away.

In all seriousness we are glad that you two found each other, I know that it took a lot of time and effort to keep your relationship going, I truly believe the time apart has strengthened your relationship. I’ve witnessed firsthand the many hours on the phone, the daily video chats, and the hundreds of dollars spent on plane tickets. Evan has said since day one that it’s all worth is because he is lucky enough to get a girl that is way out of his league. Can we please raise our glasses. Knowing Evan he will kill me if I didn’t have at least one Ronald Reagan quote, so here it is, live simply, love generously, care deeply, speak kindly, leave the rest to God, here is to Evan and Cate.

• What he said was genuine and heartfelt
• He told a few short stories that were relevant to who Mahvish was like growing up
• He talked fondly of the groom
• It was also funny when it needed to be
• He offered some wonderful advice to the couple
• He did not read, but spoke with emotion

Transcript:

Good evening everybody, let’s begin by telling you just how much of a setup this is. You get all these guys dancing coming in here, you’ve got this beautiful couple and then they put me in front of you, so this is not fair, but anyway now that I have your undivided attention, hopefully, I would like to begin by thanking all of you for having spent this weekend, for having giving of your time.

And of your love to have joined us and does time ever go by I can remember just a little while ago and this was just a little child and a few guys saw any of those pictures, I can still remember those pictures, I think I was in some of them too anyway. And time goes by and she grows and she’s 8 or she’s 10 years old and one day, when you are not expecting it, there is some conversation about what will happen when I get married daddy, and you say “well of course honey I will do a fairy tale wedding for you” so my first advise to all of you young parents is, don’t ever say that, they never forget.

So that is how it started and as time has gone on and I’ve watched her grow into a very mature, responsible adult, I’m very proud of the fact that she has worked this way to make her life what it has become and I have absolutely no hesitation in telling you Jon, that you are part of this. That the transformation of this young lady into someone that I am so proud of, that we are all so proud of, how far she has gotten, you are very much a what I have come to regard as a ground, something that prevents the flights of fancy you know.

But that being said life is going by and you saw your grandfather stand there and it wasn’t so long ago that he was there for me and so I am now there for you, and I just want you to keep up the tradition. So what tradition is that first of all you cannot give speeches with a book in front of you, you have to do it from just off the cuff right.  Remember that, we talk about that sometimes. But more seriously the tradition that I want you to always adhere to is love your family, respect your adult, respect the elders in your life, be very mindful of your place in this universe and never forget that it just takes a day to take everything away from you.  So don’t ever forget to enjoy everything, even the time you argue about whether the knives are in the right drawer or the left drawer whichever one of those you know, and you argue with them about the fact that know this carpet is this color or that, enjoy that because life has this very nasty habit of taking things away from us, so everyday should count, make it special, make it real.

And we really want kids pretty soon; I had to get it on record sorry I had to get that on record. But anyway enough of that, thank you very much everybody, I hope you have a good time, this meal and the wine is our way of thanking all of you for all that you have done for our children and have a good time, thank you very much.

Transcript from video:

This is Dan and thank you for joining me for another episode of breaking down the scene. This is episode #4 and today we are going to be looking at the final five minutes of Jaclyn and Brian's feature. The reason why I decided to choose this piece for the fourth episode is because of lot of the unique situations we found ourselves in while shooting that day. The wedding actually took place on a Monday. The wedding itself took place a lot later in the day around 6 o'clock, so it allowed us to be a lot more creative, and we knew we were going to end up with a really unique piece.

I structured, and really built the piece on lot of the audio we captured for the day. The father's speech talked a lot about when they first met and some of the things that brought them together and then Brian went into great detail about how they met and some of those details. Even the best man had talked about how he felt and what he went through after finding out about their engagement. So, really the structure was built around the back story about how they met and I really wanted to utilize that. So, you'll actually find that a lot of the audio and a lot of the music choices were actually dictated by the voice over's and the speeches and a lot of the audio that we captured that day. Because of that, I actually ended up  using a lot of instrumental pieces.

In one of the earlier episodes I had talked about how great it is to use instrumental when it comes to voice overs, because you really have the ability to fully utilize the voiceover. I really think it evokes a lot of more emotion and it really allows you to play around a lot more with it. So I decided to go that route. I actually only ended using one song with any lyrics in it, and we will get to that here in just a second. But we are going to pick up right towards the end of the ceremony right when he is telling them "you are husband and wife, may not just a bride." But we transition over into the photo shoot and I wanted to make sure I threw a little bit that in there.

I wanted to show how everybody interacted with each other, how fun the day was, and because it took place on Belle Isle. Jaclyn and Brian live in the city of Detroit so we wanted to make sure that was a really intricate part of the entire piece. and since they got married at the Whitney, they live in the city, they live right by Comerica Park, we really wanted to implement Detroit into the piece, and they have a lot of love for the 50s era on the Rat Pack offering Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Elvis as well, which is actually the inspiration 'wow' for the final song that you are listening to currently which is 'cannot fall in love'.

I really wanted to make sure that I keep with the style that they like to bring a modern twist that we would like to bring to our pieces, so I used an updated version of the classic song by Elvis. I showed a little bit of the detail shots that you can even see from the Faygo glasses that they once again, back to the 1950s the old style glasses. They have a lot of love for that era, so I really wanted to make sure that I brought that in and showed that because it is such a huge part of their personalities. I will turn the music down and we actually get into the best man's speech, which like as I said before it dealt a lot with how they met and some of the things that he went through. The speech actually ended up lasting somewhere around eight minutes. But, the bride had made the comment they should know we did a wonderful job of taking out a certain piece and cutting it down and keeping the heart of what he was saying in there. I thought that was great that I was able to capture that and really impress the bride.

After his speech kind of wraps up and we are more into the final moments of the piece. I really wanted to make sure that the final verse of the song really took center stage, because I thought the final verse really said exactly how the couple felt in terms of their love, their relationship and the life they are going to have together. So I really wanted that to take center stage so I dropped that out of the audio and really let that take over and one of the big things about the final moments of this piece was I tried to make the biggest impact I could with the small amount of footage that we were able to gather because like I had said it was a Monday evening. I really wanted to make sure that we got as much as we could in a short amount of time before we lost anybody or anybody had to go home.

One of the unique challenges that we found that we had for the evening, but alternately when it came down we really could not be happier the way the piece turned out. It really was just as unique as we wanted it to be, and I think we did a fantastic job of capturing the personality and the essence of the relationship in the piece and I couldn’t be happier with it. So we will play for here in it's entirety so stick around and check out that and we look forward to seeing for another episode.

We loved the little Detroit touches they had throughout the day, such as the old style Faygo.

Vendors That Rocked:

Photography - Silver Thumb Photography

Venue - The Whitney

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Some other things I also enjoyed, in no particular order:

• Jim and Madison’s grand entrance...loved their little dance
• The AMAZING snack bar by Bon Appetit.  The carved watermelon looked incredible!
• Seeing Peter and Julie!  And their parents!
• Some wonderful words by the priest, he does a great job of really talking about the couple

If you haven't seen their same day edit, make sure you check it out!

Congratulations guys!!!

We have a lot of toys in our bags, and some of them might look a little strange.  This is the first episode in our new series "What the Bleep is That?" where we will demonstrate what exactly these pieces of equipment do.

Episode 1: The Slider

In the this first episode, Shelby and Dan demonstrate what the dp slider is, and how we use it in your wedding video.

One of the great things about the ceremony is that we had the opportunity to shoot outside, however this has it's challenges as well.  The wind noise from being on the docks was able to be severely lessened, and being outside really showcased the amazing venue.  Right after Courtney gets done with her vows, I went ahead and dipped to black and brought it back up to scenes of them together.  I kept the ceremony going, but the officiant said some really nice stuff.

Transcript of the Video

Hi this Dan Shekels and thank you for joining me for another episode of breaking down scene, this is episode #3 and we are going to be going over Courtney and Mike's feature film. Instead of looking at the end show which is what we have done for the last two episodes today we are going to be looking at the ending starting from the end of the vows all the way to the end of the feature.

One of the great things about the ceremony was that we did have the opportunity to shoot it outside, which obviously has its challenges, I mean one of the big things was with the audio was lot of the wind noise that we got, fortunately, I was able to get rid of a lot of it's so it wasn’t too big of a deal, but one of the challenges shooting outside, but a great venue and a great opportunity nonetheless.

Right after she gets down with the vows I went ahead and dipped a color and then I brought it back up the ceremony is still, what she is saying towards, the ceremony is still going I kept her speaking, but she said some really nice stuff and one of the things she said is that, this man will find himself greater agreeing to see the good in him and accept who he is and who he shall be, by her marrying him. She said that about Mike and then she goes on to say that loving this woman she might find herself so beautiful, strong and brave and true that the world is a better place by a woman who shines so bright.

Things like that, I feel like you definitely want to see visually what you are hearing from the person so I showed a lot of the stuff that we captured from the photo shoot that was just then that looked more intimate and allowed not only break it up, it adds little more depth to the feature. After the final shot of that you can hear the music transition over into the next song which is going to lead into the next section. It keeps everything flowing really, really well. So she doesn’t keep, she doesn’t stop talking, music just changes over. She understands that there is something that is going to come up and then it drops right into the next section.

The idea after that was to show some of the stuff that was going on right for the reception. I tried to keep, I tried to use a lot of motion shots, lots of shots that have had a lot of motion going on in them to kind of keep up with the beat and keep with the flow of the day, then tried to keep it too busy. I just wanted the energy. I just wanted there to be a lot of build up, a lot of energy building up towards the grand entrance. So I used a lot of glidecam shots and lot of lot of slider shots to get to it and because everybody was having such a good time, I feel like those shots have a tendency to build up a lot more energy than some static shots sometimes and also another thing that I did a lot of during certain sections especially during the grand entrance I used a lot of jump cuts.

So we can get to the as we can cut from this is where, okay cut to the next section in the same shot which is getting to where they want to go, so I can do something else and same thing with the cake cutting. Obviously no one like it too jarring, but I think they worked out pretty nicely right here and underneath the cake cutting I did have the that's man's speech, just the tail end of a come up. I thought it summed up both the speeches really nicely in the day and everything that kind of went on and just the relationship they had together, but it will also have a really great transition into the kind of the second section of the ending, because the music kind of slows down and everything, it will allow me to really kind of jump late into the first dance.

The song worked up perfectly there, I mean a lot of editing is just feeling up the song and fingering out what parts that are going to go really well where and then I cut from the dance to the dancing  with two glide cam shots. I thought that they flowed together really well in the course of which just finding some really nice shots that people dancing and having good time, these are the people that are enjoying the day with them, so I always tried to find a lot of variations in people trying not to stick too much with the same individuals. But when I get to the ending I decided to have a shot at them kissing and enjoying the night.

I had that and then I also had the officiant come up and say talking about how she has the opportunity to wish, announce for the first time Courtney and Mike as husband and wife and then I had the 3 shots the boom-boom-boom of the harbor which I thought was a great way to end it because the day is over and then the title does what it does like the day is over, but the date will live on for ever. So I thought that was really great way to wrap it up. So I am going to go and play for you in its entirety so hopefully enjoyed and see if the next episode.

And the reception...soooooo much fun!  And decorating was superb!  The Brian Alexander experience performed all night, and they were one of the best live bands we've worked with yet!

Enjoy!

P.S. Check out their award-winning same day edit if you haven't seen it!

Vendors That Rocked:

Ceremony and Reception Venue - Bay Harbor Yacht Club

Live Band - The Brian Alexander Experience

Lyrics & Music by Dru Vocals:

In Peter & Julie we trust
Look at all the referrals sent to us
Perfect Peter, a real perfect name
A baby on the way and a house you claim
And the wedding, congrats, I know you did the right thing
But we all know the Wii is more exciting
But #1 is the new wedding video
Rewind that line if you didn't hear me, yo
Even with the Tigers in the Series, Game 7
The wedding video will be turned on instead
U of Michigan or Michigan State
This will be the #1 new wedding debate