No One Wants to Watch Your Same-Day Wedding Video at the Reception

By Mark Shrayber | July 16, 2015 | 6:15pm

In Depth

Here’s something rude that you should absolutely know: No one wants to watch your fucking wedding video. Not your guests, not your maid of honor, not your best man, and probably not even your parents. Let’s be real here—not even you want to watch your wedding video half the time, so what the fuck is up with same-day video edits? And why are people even considering doing something so awful?

The Huffington Post posted a (hopefully, but probably not) satirical article today in which Carmen Feliciano waxed poetic about same-day editing, which isn’t as heavy as the kind of editing you’d usually get for a wedding video but has the “benefit” of letting guests watch the ceremony they just watched live during the reception. Kind of like an instant replay, except the instant replay is of an event you’re at, with the people who just got married sitting right there, and also the instant replay is boring as hell because no matter how exciting your wedding entrance is, friend, I have never seen a wedding ceremony that didn’t bore me to tears. And yes, I am including those ceremonies that I have officiated and participated in. It’s special for the bride and groom, of course, but no one else really cares and—I can’t get over this—your guests just saw the whole thing go down. What kind of just-married monsters would make their friends and family watch the tape of their wedding again?

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Here are some things people would prefer to watch at a wedding reception rather than a repeat of your ceremony:

Monster trucks running over shit and being totally badass. Extra points if the monster trucks are running over wedding cakes and flowers and the video features little word balloons that say things like “POW” and “SNAP INTO A SLIM JIM” at random intervals.
A video playing randomly-automated games of Bingo. The winner of each round will receive a copy of a same-day-edited wedding DVD that they can then use as a coaster for the remainder of the evening, because no one has DVD players anymore and everything is up in the cloud and on Dropbox anyway (even though no one has any idea of what any of those words mean).
A real-time feed of the reception venue’s kitchen, which is wired for sound and has a camera secretly taping everything the staff, who have no idea they’re being recorded, is saying about the wedding.
Colonoscopy videos provided by those guests who have had them. Nothing says “enjoy your Beef Wellington” quite like a cinematic journey through grandma’s butt in search of polyps and unusual fungal growths in her rectum.
Literally anything else. You could put on Faces of Death and your guests would still be way more pleased to watch a brutal jailhouse murder than the 30 minutes they’ve already wastied watching you stumble through your vows, which seemed heartfelt and special at the time but are actually just corny and not very interesting and full of inside jokes that only two people got the first time and no one’s getting now just because you’re showing the video of the ceremony. Remember how few chuckles there were when this thing was happening live? Now imagine even fewer chuckles and just a groan of annoyance coming from the groom’s sister who would rather be getting drunk at Senor Frog’s in Cabo.

Feliciano offers her own same-day-edit (seen above) as an example of how awesome the trend can be (and it’s apparently very popular all over the world). While it’s a lovely film (filled with smiling people and Feliciano’s own version of John Legend’s “All of Me”) it doesn’t seem like anything more than just another way to bilk whoever’s paying for the wedding out of more money, creating a meaningless status symbol—it’s not like the bride and groom will have time to enjoy it—that will undoubtedly make everyone hate your wedding just a little. (Yes, even if they say they love it.) (No, no one actually loved it.)

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