White weddings

I had to opportunity to go over two hours of wedding footage, a typical white princess wedding, the best day of a bride's life. It's up to me to now create a really short piece, about 4 minutes long, compiling the best moments of the whole day - from the dressing up to the after party. What you do is you take many different clips, each only a few seconds, slow them all down to 50% the natural speed, fade them into one another, add some really emotional music and it's 90% done. That is all it is: really really short pieces of video stitched together under some music. But I really do mean short - like I said, a few seconds each. The party was, however, several hours long. The footage covers only two hours of it and, as you may imagine, not all of it were perfect moments.
Unless some heartbroken friend of the bride gets drunk, weddings usually run pretty smoothly. They can't, however (like nothing in reality can), match the bride's expectation. She wants everything to be 100% flawless, and it's frustrating when they can't find the paper for the couple to sign. It's frustrating when no one is really dancing yet and she starts thinking they might be bored. It can be frustrating when the moment comes to throw the flowers and there aren't as many single ladies desperate to catch it as there are in the movies. And when you throw it, honestly, it's not that exciting. Summing it up, it's frustrating when things aren't like the movie they've been playing in their heads for so many years.
I can say weddings are one of those events that are always much better before and after it happens. The couple, or let's be honest, the bride, thinks it will be the most perfect happy day ever. Then it happens. And she will try and remember it as the most perfect and happy day ever. It wasn't though. It's like your graduation trip: it wasn't as fun as everyone says so (maybe except for a couple of guys who REALLY could party nonstop for a week).
What helps in this remembering of the wedding as such a perfect happy day is the photographic and video coverage of the event. What you get from this service is a beautiful compilation of beautiful moments that represent a perfect happy day but that in reality didn't happen spontaneously. If you got married in the traditional way, you know this already (were you disappointed?), and if you don't: trust me. That moment where the groom and the bride peek out behind two trees and walk to each other to meet in the middle in a beautiful inspiring park - yeah that was the photographer's suggestion. It's a good think that wedding videos have nothing but background music as sound, or you'd hear "To the left to the left... alright now chin up a bit... good, now smile... and kiss... put your arm over her head... alright yes just like that".
It's a complete fabrication. Most photographers, this is what they do for you. This is their service. I'm not trying to criticize their work - this is, after all, what people want: memories of a perfect day (in the end, doesn't it all come down to how you remember it?). And this they do well, extremely well. It should matter, however, to the couple. It's hard for me not to judge people when they don't realize that they are creating not a memory of their own unique personal wedding, but a memory that's no different from any other couple's memory. The same photos, the same editing. Other then a few talented exceptions, wedding videos all tell the same fabricated story.
Again, I really want to stress that I'm not taking any value from the photographer's/video expert's work. They do what they set themselves to, they do it well, and it's what people want. I do criticize, however, that people are happy with an impersonal memory of what's supposed to be the greatest day in their life (until their first child is born). It's enough that, by sticking to tradition, the brides are already making their wedding a copy of everyone else's before them - why make the memory of it also the same? Am I being too demanding when I want people to be a bit more conscious and critical about their own life? Maybe I am, I personally don't think so, but wether wrong or right, the truth remains that it's their choice and everyone is entitled to happiness, no matter what it means to them.

After all, and like I said above, in the end it all comes down to how you remember it.