David came highly recommended. After viewing his work on his website and social media, we felt confident he would capture our wedding well. Our wedding was not traditional -- my husband is Assyrian and I am Mexican -- and included important cultural events we told David about.
We originally booked 10 hours of coverage, but about 10 days before the wedding we became concerned that would not be enough to capture all essential moments. After discussing this with David and the photographer, we increased coverage to 13 hours so the day's events -- from the morning ceremonies at both bride and groom homes through the reception dancing -- would be documented.
When the videos were delivered, we received a ceremony video, an 11-minute highlight reel and an "extended cut" that included one of the first looks (there were three but only one was captured), the venue entrance, speeches, first dance, and parent dances. No other footage from the day was provided. We initially assumed a longer main edit was missing, but David told us that was all the footage he had.
Many important moments were omitted completely or shown only for a second or two. For example, the Assyrian "taking out the bride" ceremony -- when the groom and his family arrive to the bride's home with traditional zorna dabula music, request the parents' blessing, present gifts to my brothers who block the door and then escort us to the car -- was reduced to brief highlights. We wanted a minute-by-minute record of that event and other cultural elements, not just fleeting clips.
There is little or no substantial footage of the groom and groomsmen getting ready, me and my bridesmaids getting ready, me pinning boutonnieres, cocktail hour, or the reception dancing. It felt as if David did no advance work to understand our expectations and priorities. When we raised these concerns, he offered a refund only if we signed an agreement preventing us from speaking negatively about him or pursuing the matter further. He also refused to allow a third-party video editor to view the raw footage to see if the video we want can be produced before signing the agreement. We never asked for our money back; we asked him to deliver a complete video that reflected what we paid for.
Rather than addressing the issue or producing the video we requested, David effectively tried to buy our silence. Our wedding is a once-in-a-lifetime event and worth far more than the fee he charged. His refusal to correct the problem or release the raw footage to an independent editor has prevented us from hiring another editor to create the video we expected. Other videographers we consulted agreed that 13 hours of coverage should produce a substantially longer edit that captures the key moments we repeatedly emphasized -- especially given we confirmed the extended hours shortly before the wedding.
David maintains he fulfilled his obligations, but when the majority of essential moments we specified are missing, or reduced to a few seconds, that claim is unfounded. It's like hiring someone to make a film and receiving only the trailer. Delivering roughly two hours of usable footage from a contracted 13-hour day does not satisfy the agreement or our expectations. read more
