December 2018 Newsletter
Greetings everyone! Reid here with Best Made Videos®. I started off the month of November taking a long weekend down to the Washington coast with Dorothy and the rest of my family. Walking the beach with Rosie, checking out some of the local shops, restaurants and other tourist activities was a great way to spend a long weekend escaping from work. We even took an afternoon in the nearby town of Seabrook, which is an awesome wedding venue that we have had the opportunity to work at before. Being able to explore the town (without having to focus on capturing a wedding) was such a fun and unique way to experience all of the little tidbits that the awesome seaside town has to offer!
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It's always fun to see when our clients announce that they are expecting and it's an even greater thrill to see when they welcome new life into the world. Two of our past clients Minh and Thai-Hang welcomed a new little bundle of joy into the world shortly before Thanksgiving. These two had an awesome wedding a few years ago at Seattle University and it's been so fun getting to follow their journey along the way to parenthood!
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Four years ago this month I gave my final 2 week notice at my last Monday-Friday job before deciding to focus full time on running Best Made Videos®. Although it was a scary decision to make, it has proven to be one of the best decisions I have ever made, allowing me to focus 100% of my time and energy on providing my clients and couples the best experience I can, whether it is for a wedding, corporate event or other video project. I want to thank everyone for their love and support in helping me along on this journey over the last 4+ years. I love you all!
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Taking a little personal time, I went down to Los Angeles to check out the WWE Pay Per View "Survivor Series." I enjoyed this get-away, along with the rest of fun activities that happened to go on during the weekend. Title belt in hand, my friend Paul and I ran around town having a blast watching 3 full days of wrestling before returning to Seattle for the Thanksgiving weekend. In case you were interested in a little history of the event, here is an entry from Wikipedia:
"Survivor Series is an annual professional wrestling pay-per-view (PPV) event held in November by WWE. It is the second longest running pay-per-view event in WWE history (behind WrestleMania) and one of the "Big Four" events, along with WrestleMania, Royal Rumble and SummerSlam, as it is one of the original four pay-per-views produced by WWE.
The first Survivor Series, held in 1987, came on the heels of the success of WrestleMania III, as the then-WWF began to see the lucrative potential of the pay-per-view market. The first event capitalized on the big time feud between Hulk Hogan and André the Giant, who wrestled each other at WrestleMania III. Survivor Series was originally created to be a "Thanksgiving tradition" as the first eight Survivor Series events took place on either Thanksgiving Day (1987–1990) or Thanksgiving Eve (1991–1994). Since 1995, the event has been held the Sunday before Thanksgiving (save for the 2005 and 2006 events, which were held after Thanksgiving).
With the return of the brand split in 2016, the 2016,[2] 2017,[3] and 2018[4] events have focused on direct competition between the two brands, Raw and SmackDown, similar to the Bragging Rights events that WWE held for two years during the first brand split. The theme of the 2017 and 2018 Survivor Series events in particular was brand supremacy; in addition to traditional Survivor Series elimination matches featuring Raw's men, women, and tag teams against SmackDown's, every champion of Raw faced their counterpart of SmackDown."
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Following Thanksgiving, I traveled back down to Los Angeles for the premiere of my friend Paul Sanchez's documentary "The Last Days of Dixie." It premiered on December 3 at the Vista Theatre in East LA. "The Last Days of Dixie" is a story about the closing of the local college radio station D91 in St. George, Utah. Having filmed part of the documentary as well as having traveled to Utah with Paul to help capture some of the b-roll for the film, I wanted to go down and support my friend for his film's "World Premiere." With a great reception from everyone in attendance (including those who had come into town from Utah to see the premiere) I think the event went off with a tremendous success. The next step for the film is Paul submitting the final cut to local film festivals around the country.
As we approach Christmas and the long wedding "off-season," I always like to take a day to go through and put together a promo video. It is an opportunity for me to showcase all of our wonderful weddings from the year before. This is not only a great way for me (and anybody watching) to go back and re-live some of the awesome moments from the last year, but it always allows me to reflect on what I want to spotlight in the wedding videos that we produce. This year I wanted to focus on FUN and all of the joy that our couples have on their wedding day. Wedding videography is important for lots of reasons. We capture your wedding ceremony, we make sure that you have a record of all of the toast and well-wishes that you receive on your wedding day, but more than anything else we capture love, joy and happiness. All of the moments showcased in this year's highlight video show someone laughing, crying with joy or just having a great time. This is what I want to focus on capturing at our weddings moving forward into 2019 and beyond! I hope you enjoy!
Donald and Kendall got married at one of my all time favorite venues, The Bellevue Club. This classy venue is located in my hometown of Bellevue, Wa. Besides holding lots of fun childhood memories for me, such as playing basketball and swimming, The Bellevue Club is actually one of the fanciest and most accommodating places one could choose to get married on the Eastside. These two had a spectacular day and I would encourage everyone to check out their wedding video!
Continuing our string of "Eastside" weddings, we were fortunate enough to get to spend the day with Dan and Mary over at The Overlake Golf and Country Club, located right down the street from Bill Gates' house in Medina, Wa. Besides having a romantic and joy-filled wedding ceremony, these two actually hired a live band who absolutely tore the house down at their reception. Dan and Mary laughed and danced the night away surrounded by all of their family and friends. Check out their wedding highlight video to see all of the fun for yourself!
Angelina and Taylor (who got married back in March at Trinity Tree Farm in Issaquah, Wa) were gracious enough to take some time to record a video testimonial with us via Skype talking about their experience working with Best Made Videos® for their wedding videography. I so enjoyed getting to hear their reaction to receiving their video (on their honeymoon) and what their reactions were watching it the first time. It's definitely a fun watch!!
We released a ton of new episodes of our podcast "Get to Know Your Wedding Pro" this month including interviews with Lessie McFarlane of Lessie Blue Photography, Jaeda Reed of Jaeda Reed Photography, Jamie Buckley of Jamie Buckley Photography, Lori Losee of Elegant Affairs and Chris Beck of Chinook Photography.
Check out the entire podcast feed on: www.soundcloud.com/bestmadevideos. And please let me know if there is anybody that you would like to hear from in an upcoming wedding vendor interview!
Monthly Videography Tip!
We won "Best of Weddings" for the Knot in 2019.
This is a very exciting announcement. I was just informed the other day via email that we were selected as "Best of Weddings" for The Know in 2019. The fact that we have been chosen the last four years means that we have officially entered their Hall of Fame as a "Best of Weddings" wedding vendor. I can't thank all of our amazing clients, couples, family and friends for their support over the years and for helping us achieve this milestone. Thanks so much!!!
My job wouldn't be complete without including a nice image of ROSIE! Rosie was super excited to see our Christmas tree and decorations go up around the house. She was so excited in fact that she couldn't wait to make her own little bed under the tree! Love that little friend...
Thank you all for checking out our monthly newsletter! December continues to be an exciting month full of little projects to catch up on. Christmas is approaching and things are slowly winding down for the year. We are headed up to Leavenworth on Friday for Allysa and Jake's wedding which will be our last wedding of the year. As always, thanks again for your support, I'm off to edit some more wedding videos and to update our blog. Have a good one!
- Reid