EA Vendor Spotlight: Best Made Videos

Tell us about your business!
We are a wedding videography and corporate video production company serving the greater Pacific Northwest. We have been in business for 6 years and have shot 269 weddings to date.

Why did you want to get into the wedding industry?
I graduated from Gonzaga University with a degree in broadcast journalism and spent 8 years working in the television news industry before transitioning to running my own company. The funny thing is that we originally weren't going to do weddings at all. I booked a last min craigslist wedding when the bride's cousin told her 2 days before the wedding that he couldn't make it to film the event. I immediately noticed that people enjoying having me there (very different from my experience working with the public when I was in news) and I was immediately hooked! We now have a good mix of about 60% weddings and 40% corporate gigs which keeps us busy throughout the year.

What makes your company stand out?
We pride ourselves on the service we provide our clients. Response rate and quality of work are the two things I pride myself in the most. You will always get a response from me within a few minutes (unless I'm sleeping...which isn't often! lol)

Tell us about your personal style when it comes to your craft?
We have a documentary style of approach when it comes to our wedding videos, this allows us to truly showcase the couples' day and what is important to them. We provide our couples a pre-wedding questionnaire prior to their wedding day, which gives us guidance as to what to focus the most on in terms of aspects of the day. Although we capture detailed moments throughout the entire wedding day, this questionnaire lets us know what is important, and also what isn't as important to the couple when it comes to their wedding video, so we can handcraft a perfect tailored wedding video to each and every one of our couples. The highest compliment we receive from our couples is that "their wedding video FELT like their wedding day."

Favorite part of working with couples?
Definitely corresponding online via social media prior to the wedding and also sharing sneak peeks of our wedding videos in progress to our couples via Instagram. This allows our couples to follow our workflow from start to finish, and it also builds anticipating for their finally receiving their wedding video!! I try to be as accessible to my clients as possible, and sometimes sending a quick DM over Instagram is a lot easier than sending a detailed message, so any little bit helps.

Favorite part of wedding day?
As someone who wrote his own vows at his wedding, listening to and capturing any sort of personal vow at a wedding ceremony will always be my favorite. It gives more insights into the couple and their backstory along with what makes them tick. Also this gives us a lot of great content to use to edit the highlight videos. Fun wedding toasts work well also for entertaining highlight videos. Also as a videographer specifically, being able to capture and hang out during the "getting ready" portion of the day is extremely important. Not only does that give us a lot of good footage to use in the edited highlight video, but it also helps set a tone for the day. Everyone is able to get to know one another, family members, groomsmen, bridesmaids and everyone else, and it helps set everyone at ease for the rest of the big day!!

Advice to couples in selecting a vendor in your category?
Read reviews and check online presence. Also look for someone you want to build a rapport with. Wedding vendors who are truly invested in their couples and the wedding industry as a whole, want to be available to you every step of the way. As a videographer, we spend most, if not all of the day together alongside your wedding photographer, so it's good to find someone you want to spend time with. If you can, find people who like working with one another. Some of the strongest relationships I have are with other fellow wedding vendors. You want an army supporting you on your big day and it's good to find people who have been in the trenches with each other before!

How to Contact Best Made Videos®:
425-785-0718
reid@bestmadevideos.com
www.bestmadeweddingvideos.com
@bestmadevideos on Facebook, IG, Twitter, Pinterest

How to register for your Wedding!

Recently engaged and onto the registering phase? Unsure what to register for? Every couple needs the core essentials for their new lifelong partnership, so we’ve compiled a rough guideline to help you choose what yours will be.

What you already have. First and foremost, you need to sit down and take notes about what you already have. Everything that will be joining you and your partner in your new home will not need to be replicated, so make sure you’re accounting for all your dishes, towels, and that fancy Kitchenette mixer that you haven’t taken out since last winter. You want to utilize the free gift phase by only asking for the items you don’t have yet. This is easier if you already live together because you can go through what you both have instead of what you both have individually. If you won’t be moving in together until after you say “I do,” you should make decisions about what stays and what goes as you compile your belongings together before registering for anything new.

Extracurricular Activities/Hobbies. Take into consideration what lifestyle you and your partner lead. What are you two into? Do you both love to cook and/or bake? Do you love the outdoors and go on a lot of hiking and camping trips? Ask for items that you can use for the activities that you love to do on a regular basis. I say “on a regular basis,” because you need to be registering for items that you know you will utilize. If you already host parties, and you know that you’ll be hosting a lot of parties in the future for example, ask for dishes that you know you will be utilizing frequently, and legitimately need. If you start asking for items because you want to try a new hobby, you may not stick with it and be left with something expensive that a family member or friend bought for you that is now just taking up space in your home.

Location. Think about where it is you two will be living after you’re married, regardless of whether or not you’re already living there. What will be useful? Will you be living in the mountains and in need of warm blankets? Think about what will be useful in your home.

Living space. How much space you’ll be living in plays a big factor in how much and what you’ll be asking for as well. If you’ll be living in a small apartment, there’s no need to request large baking items that will take up a lot of counter space. If you’ll be living in a large house where counter space is abundant, then go for it! Make sure the items you’ll be registering for aren’t going to overload your space.

Future goals. Will you two be moving somewhere new or staying around your current location after your wedding? Will you be scaling down or ramping up? Aim to ask for items that will contribute to future plans with your person. Anything that doesn’t seem necessary probably isn’t, and items that you know you’ll need are most important.

Don’t take advantage of the power. Registering for a wedding can feel like you’re creating your best birthday list yet; but that’s not the case. These should only be items that you and your partner need, that will ultimately make the best contribution to your life together. Don’t take advantage of your friends and family by asking for anything you want just because you want it. On that note, don’t ask for items that are unreasonably priced either. You want this to be fun for those you love, not stressful.

Before you do any registering, these are the types of things you’ll need to consider to create a successful wedding registry. If you don’t want to create a registry at all, tune into our blog on Thursday to discover some great alternative ideas!  

Adventures in Wedding Planning Podcast: COVID-19 and its impact on Weddings

We are so excited to introduce you to our latest project: Adventures in Wedding Planning, our new Podcast!

We have been wanting to bring back our Podcast after taking a little hiatus and with the Shelter at Home order it gave us another push that this was the right time to bring it back. Speaking of which, this reason was actually our inspiration for our inaugural episode.

With COVID-19 putting a wrench into wedding planning, we wanted to address it and talk about what steps you need to take if you need to postpone your wedding. And yes I only said Postpone as we are advising our clients not to cancel, but simply to reschedule their wedding to a later date either in 2020 or 20201.

We would love for you to take a listen and let us know what you there. Here is a link to our Podcast!

Stay Tuned for our next episode on Saturday where we go back to the beginning and chat about how to start wedding planning!

If you have a topic for a future episode, we would love to hear it!

If you want to revisit our previous Podcasts, here is the link!