Not all, but most of the weddings I get to plan are 3 or 4 days of events. Here's the typical line-up:
Usually the weekend starts with the rehearsal dinner, (Thursday)
Followed by a welcome reception (Thursday)
A spa day for the gals and a golf or fishing tourney for the fellas,(Friday)
Perhaps then a sunset cruise, luau, casino night, or the newest rage- Karaoke parties (Friday)
Then of course the wedding ceremony, reception, and after party (Saturday)
And then it all has to come to a close with a farewell brunch... (Sunday)
As you can imagine, there are just tons of memories to capture with all this fun stuff going on. In 2005 I started to notice that more and more of my clients wanted to have all their events documented with professional photography and videography. And really, it kind of makes sense. You figure, when else in your life are you going to have all the people you care about and enjoy the most spending the weekend with you doing nothing but fun stuff? I had a wedding weekend, and I would give anything to have a few really good photos from our welcome reception and video of our best mans speech. One of the neat things I've noticed about these weddings where we've had everything covered is that by the time you get to the wedding, the photographer and videographer visually "know" everyone, and because of that they get amazing shots during the most important 6 hours (ceremony-reception).
Here are a few tips if you're considering going this route:
1. If you're going to have your photographer cover all or few events, make certain that your photographer is a not only a good wedding photographer, but also a good photojournalist. A photojournalist doesn't ask for things to happen, they photograph what does happen and most important, they photograph unobtrusively.
2. Book the whole weekend at once. The last thing you want to do is call your photographer a month before the wedding to ask her to cover the casino party only to find out she's already booked on another wedding for that day.
3. Book the videographer for anything that's going to be big on sound and/or movement- obviously anything where there will be speeches, toasts, or bad singing (ha!).
4. Take advantage of all this documentation- share it. In addition to your wedding video, have the videographer create a 15 minute highlight dvd of the best moments from the weekend to give to your family and wedding party. You can also have your photographer send the videographer some of the photos to add to the video highlights.
One more thing, this is an "extra". Adding something like this can throw your budget WAY off. If you can't swing the whole weekend, maybe just pick one extra event to cover.
