@mintcheerios What a bummer! I guess I need to have a backup plan for my groom Lav then. Maybe Laving the priest too, or setting up a mic close to the spot where they are going to stand?

There was one wedding I had where after the ceremony ended, we realized the vows were not recorded to the portable recorder. We usually wire the groom up with a lav and hit record before the ceremony begins. It turns out that the groom said something really bad while chatting with his friends, and he tried to delete the recording himself. Of course, he didn't know how to operate the damn thing and he just ended up shutting it off. He never came up to us before the ceremony so basically we ended up with in-camera audio from the other side of the church which sounded like crap. I guess the lesson is, put an active taser in his pocket with the recorder so when he tries to touch it he learns a quick lesson.

Funny, in the same wedding when the couple arrived at the reception, the DJ said the wrong name for the groom (Jesse instead of Jason or something) and we got the bride's reaction to it. Pretty funny stuff, but yeah, weddings are a pain.

Props to you guys who are using HDSLR's for weddings though. I don't think I could do without the deep DOF and fast autofocus of traditional 1/3" 3 ccd cameras.

I have massive respect for anyone who has the courage to shoot weddings. Doubly so for those that shoot weddings on HDSLRs. That's something I'm never getting in to. I care too much about making people happy and never letting then down!

Oh yeah - I've encountered those types. At a church gig we did last year they went completely ape because we moved a mic stand AND when she tried to test the PA it wouldn't work because we switched it off at the wall. So we switched it back on for her to convince her it all worked but she was pretty huffy about the whole thing and insisted on testing it before she let us leave. As we were walking out the door I whistled a steady high-pitched tone, louder and louder, and (thinking it was feedback) the last thing I saw was her looking at the amplifier with absolute horror, trying to work out what the hell was wrong and how to stop it whistling.

Evil, but also strangely satisfying. Actually, it's a great gag to pull when someone's setting up any PA especially in an echoey building. In satisfaction terms, it's right up there with bursting a paper bag while someone's poking around in the innards of a power supply.

Shooting weddings ain't an easy gig but it's great experience - I don't think I've ever shot a wedding where something didn't go wrong but if you've got a backup - you can recover. Like the celebrity wedding I shot recently. grabbed a line out of the desk for the speeches one to have the operator turn the levels down to nothing! luckily each camera (3 of) has a small shotgun mike and so I had sound, not great sound but passable.

That same wedding I discovered what happens when you shoot outside on a cold rainy day and rush inside to a warm humid room - by the time the bride entered my lens had fogged up so badly it looked like she was in a smoke filled room - I ended up in the toilet trying to defog the lens during the ceremony! - luckily I had 2 other cameramen & a static wide shot to cover things.

I've done a number of weddings held in Catholic churches (thus, a catholic wedding), and each one of them the church coordinator tells me that I can not move at all during the whole ceremony, but then I see photographer roaming about freely...??

@Mimirsan

Yep, I think it is very good school also. As it teach you do it all right at the first try.

@pundit Spot on! @Mark_the_Harp I have yet do do Russian Mob Wedding (TM) but until then I'm gonna practice dodging camcorders!

I always jump at any opportunity to tell my lightsaber bride story. I was graciously asked by a friend to help him shoot a wedding (his videography partner was getting hitched, so he technically was there that day, but not as a camera operator). Anyway, I'm up on stage, and this is a fairly contemporary wedding with a full set of contemporary Christian worship music. If you've ever been to a contemporary service, you know they like low light (I actually prefer it myself in a normal worship setting). The only thing is, the bride apparently REALLY wanted everything lit only in blue. So I'm up on stage, the whole auditorium is black, with blue-gelled lights pounding down on the stage . . . and who do you suppose comes walking up the isle? And what color dress do you suppose she is wearing?

THE BRIDE. IN WHITE. LIT ALL IN BLUE.

She wanted blue, that's what she got. She was lit up like Skywalker's blade of pure plasma on the Fourth of July.

Other than that, it was a great shoot. Very courteous and professional stills photographer, plenty of pre-planning, and it all went just fine. Shooting with two camera operators makes a big difference.

Coming from a photographic background I often get asked to shoot weddings for cheap/free.

I say... "Fine! I'll leave all my professional camera gear behind and just bring my iPhone... is that okay?"

"You mean you're going to photograph OUR wedding with an iPhone?!!"

"Don't be ridiculous. I'm going to text all your friends and tell them what a cheapskate asshole you are!".

I've had many instances of signal-less wireless mics, or worse, absolute distortion throughout entire ceremony. Strange how that happens even when I test them right before the ceremony and they're fine...why does that happen?

Got one of my 3 cameras stolen (My HV-20) at a concert I was filming the night before a wedding shoot. Unfortunately the bag had chargers for both the HV-20 and HV-30, and I used up the battery on the concert. Scrambled to find an extra cam, ended up calling on my GoPro, hid it inconspicuously on the altar, and actually got kind of a cool shot from it. It was a low paying/low expectation gig for an acquaintance and they were happy with the result.

By that I mean flower arches!