And just like that, with a click of the mouse, the 2024 wedding season is behind me. If you heard a groan that sounded both deeply painful and immodestly satisfied, don’t be alarmed—it was just me.
2024 is what I’m calling my pivot year. I’ve been a wedding filmmaker for eight years (at least that’s what I tell people—I don’t have the energy to check the records. Could be ten, could be twenty. Who knows). Weddings have been good to me. And while I don’t know exactly when my first wedding was, I do know it has been my full-time job for eight years (I think). What an amazing gift! To not have a boss. To work when I want, how I want, and the only people I have to answer to are the couples. In the non-denominational Christian world I grew up in, we’d call that a blessing.
I love the freedom it gives me. I was homeschooled growing up, so I’m used to my schedule being my own, more or less. As long as things got done when they were due, that’s all that mattered. To be honest, that’s all I know. So the idea of working for someone, for some corporation, some faceless entity that slowly wants to suck the life out of me — horrifying.
It also helps when you have a wife who has a real job that provides health insurance. Again, blessed.
But something was shifting within me the past few years. I was starting to resent weddings. Actually, I kind of hated them. I still loved the people I worked with. But creatively, I was drowning. That muscle that artists have that needs to be flexed was starting to atrophy. You know how serious medical conditions can change how people behave? Well, I’m not saying I had one—unless creative burnout counts as a diagnosable illness. Because at this point, it sure felt like one.
When I first started filming weddings, I took everything that came my way. And looking back, I’m shocked at the number of people who trusted me with little to no evidence that I could do it. Sure, I wasn’t asking for big money back then, but it’s still a big moment in people’s lives. I was grateful for every opportunity. And considering my lack of experience, I did a pretty good job. The couples were happy with what I delivered… for the most part. There was one couple, slightly older, who wanted interviews of all their guests during the reception. You know, the classic catching the guests off guard during cocktail hour and asking them if they have anything to say to the bride and groom and they respond something profound like “Congratulations!… Wow… Umm… Happy to be hear… Love you guys!” stuff. They mentioned this to me offhandedly, or at least I wasn’t paying enough attention to take it as anything more than an offhanded suggestion. I was still young and didn’t really know what I was doing so I was hyper focused on the things that I thought were important. I only interviewed a couple of their guests. They wanted every guest. They weren’t thrilled. But it was a great learning experience in the importance of communication. Just sorry it came at John and Jane Doe’s expense.
During those years, that creative muscle was being exhausted, like a child who’s worn out but doesn’t want to stop playing because they are having too much fun. I was having a blast. I mean, I was making money with the same camera I used for Runaway Brandon. That’s insane! I didn’t think anyone would ever pay me for anything. Most times I didn’t feel like I deserved it, not because I wasn’t proud of the work, but because it felt like cheating. I figured one of these days people would catch on, “wait, this guy just hits record and we’re PAYING him to do that?!” Fortunately, that day never came.
Remember how I said I took everything that came to me? Yeah, that’s where things started to go sideways. I started to bite off more than I could chew. Not in terms of getting stuff done, I was still delivering everything on time (with a few exceptions), and I was still getting good feedback. Great feedback, actually. I had transitioned from under-promising and over-delivering to setting genuine expectations. The “we see your work and it’s really good, we want that!” expectations, and meeting them head-on. Production-wise, things were great. Creatively, not so much. The repetition was taking a toll. The creative muscle was straining, but I pushed on.
This all came to a head in 2021—the year after Covid. The year from hell. Most people probably consider 2020 to be the year from hell, but not me. I don’t need to remind you, but most events in 2020 were postponed, if they weren’t canceled entirely. I was very fortunate that the majority of the weddings I had booked for 2020 were pushed to 2021, and most of them (except for a few) worked around my schedule. It was a great morale boost to have people care that much about your work. And hardly any money lost! (Actually, money gained when you count those nice stimmy-checks.) Blessed.
Yes, it was a great boost to ol’ morale, but over time, it became a slow, crushing of the soul. I did forty-eight weddings in 2021. I had been averaging somewhere between thirty and thirty-five in the years prior. The editing. Oh, the editing! I lived with Premiere Pro open on my computer (before I came to my senses and started using DaVinci Resolve), cranking out wedding after wedding like a machine. I felt like a factory worker, like one of those kids in a Chinese sweatshop stitching together iPhones. When you have that deep, aching need to create, being stuck in a factory feels like a prison. Not as much of a prison as, you know, the actual sweatshop kid, but still—soul-sucking in its own way.
I did the math: of the 8,760 hours in 2021, I spent 4,800 of them editing.
(Just to be clear, it wasn’t any individual wedding that was the issue—I loved every one of them. It was just… the math.)
I didn’t know it at the time, but that’s when the resentment began. Maybe I wasn’t fully asleep at the wheel, but for the next few years, I was definitely on autopilot. I did my job, checked all the boxes. But I wasn’t happy. If it weren’t for the bills, I probably would have walked away. Unfortunately, there aren’t many options for someone like me—no college degree, self-taught, with no experience outside filmmaking. Following my passion had boxed me in. Blessed.
That creative muscle? I wasn’t even sure it was there anymore.
Cut to May 25th, 2024. Three days before my birthday. The wedding of Mallory and Brayton Shannon.
It began like any other wedding day. I got up, showered, packed my gear, double-checked that I had my gear, triple-checked that I had my gear (I had a dream I forgot my tripods once, and it has haunted me to this day), and off I went to White Willow Farms. Not asleep, but not excited.
Then something happened. Something I didn’t see coming.
I had fun.
Why did I have fun, you may ask? To this day, I can’t explain it.
Was it how kind, sweet, radiant, effervescent, joyful, vibrant, upbeat, caring, and loving Mallory and Brayton were?
Yes, but a lot of couples are those things.
Was it the way Brayton got choked up when Mallory walked down the aisle, in a way that reminded me of when my wife walked down the aisle at our wedding?
Yes, but every bride walks down the aisle, and it’s not uncommon for the groom to get choked up. I see it all the time.
Was it how moving I found their vows, her dad’s speech, and the way Brayton tackled his sister when she caught the bouquet?
Yes, yes, and yes. All those things and many more things that I can’t put into words because I don’t know what words I could possibly use. It’s like trying to describe why I love my wife. I could write a fifty-page thesis, but there is something deeper, something spiritual, that words can’t describe.
All of a sudden, I wasn’t editing a wedding video. I was editing Mallory and Brayton’s wedding video. There was a connection I hadn’t felt in a long time. It was personal. And I loved it.
This feeling carried over to every wedding I filmed the rest of the year. Each one was unique and beautiful in its own way, and I got to tell their stories. It was thrilling. Meagan and Noah out in Crawfordsville. Rodge and Keith in Bloomington. Lauren and Alex in Brown County. Kaelynn and Chase, Courtney and Reece, Lauren & Deryk, McKenna and Tré, Annie and Alex, Emma and Quinn, Emily and Lucas, Bailey and Jalen, Logan and Jake (back at White Willow Farms — that was special), Lydia and Edmond, Kelsey and Connor, and a few others who prefer to remain anonymous.
And of course, Rachel and Trenden. You both gave my wife and me the amazing opportunity to visit Colorado and film your beautiful, little wedding (little in size, but most certainly not in heart), and I think a piece of us has remained there.
Maddy and Greg, you gave me the chance to come back to my second home. I apologize for bringing a blizzard with me. I’ll never forget how cold and wet and completely perfect it was. My brother fell down some stairs; Maddy, you kind of had an exorcism when you signed your last name away; and Greg, your dad turned a lawn mower analogy into a shockingly clever metaphor for marriage. I think he’s kind of a mad genius.
I can’t thank each and every one of you enough for the joy you’ve brought back to my creative spirit.
You’ll notice the list above is much shorter than the forty-eight I did in 2021. Fewer even than the thirty-three I did last year. That wasn’t the plan going into 2024. I fully expected to do my usual amount. For some reason, that didn’t happen. And the uncertainty was a little scary at first. But it ended up being the biggest blessing. It gave me the time and creative energy I needed to focus on each wedding. That’s a trend that I’m going to continue with going forward. I’m doing even less this year, and the plan is to do even less next year (bills be damned!). For the first time in my eight (or ten or twenty) years of doing weddings, I’m actually turning people away. I’ve even started doing some commercial work again—something I never thought I would have time to do.
While the year from hell still lives in the back of my mind, I no longer feel like I’m trapped in it. And the best part is I didn’t have to run away from weddings to escape it. I just had to pivot my perspective.
That creative muscle? Oh yeah, she’s getting a workout. I’ll try not to groan anymore.
