At Issabella Negri’s August wedding, two camcorders captured the day — one in the trusted hands of a bridesmaid, who filmed behind-the-scenes moments in the “bridal suite” at the bride’s best friend’s mom’s house, and another perched on a mantle at a house nearby, recording the chaos as the groomsmen were getting ready.
“One of my husband’s friends has crazy hair, and you can see him trying to pat it down,” said Ms. Negri, 29, an aesthetician, of the raw camcorder footage. “And he’s like, Damn it, under his breath.”
The grainy footage wasn’t a mistake — it was the point. It caught exactly what the couple, who live in Brooklyn, hoped to document from their wedding at the groom’s parents’ house in western Sonoma County, Calif.
“A lot of things are so curated with weddings these days,” said Ms. Negri. “What you want to actually see is how the guests are feeling in the moment.”
Most professional wedding videographers aim for cinematic perfection — high-definition close-ups, sweeping drone shots, and vows and speeches in crystal-clear audio.
But a growing number of young couples want something different: the nostalgic charm of a hand-held camcorder, complete with grainy footage, awkward zooms and candid moments that traditional wedding videographers may not be able to offer.
“The slow-motion shots of the ring and then the slow-motion shots of the guy tying his tie — there’s not much humanness to it,” said Leverett Tobias Forehand, 24, a freelance video and photo editor who opted for a camcorder to film his October wedding in Cave Springs, Ark.
Once the hallmark of ’90s family gatherings, the hand-held camcorder, affectionately referred to by many as the “dad cam,” has become a source of nostalgia for a generation of people who grew up watching their parents record soccer games, recitals and holiday moments.
Dozens of recent camcorder wedding video snippets online emulate the casual, silly and tender tone of old home videos: a guest putting a camcorder close to his face and asking when the couple is going to have kids, a grandma blowing a kiss, bridesmaids singing along to a 2000s Justin Bieber song.
Mr. Forehand’s wife, Chloe Woodell, 23, a child development specialist in Nashville, where the couple live, said she had drawn inspiration from old home videos her father had filmed on a camcorder. At their wedding, they used multiple camcorders.
“That was just so special to me,” Ms. Woodell said of the throwback videos. “So getting a camcorder video felt like something we would actually show our kids.”
Kaeli Snyder, 23, spent the first night of her honeymoon sifting through three hours of footage from the two $50 camcorders she bought on Amazon for her wedding in Denison, Texas.
The cost and the fun she had following up with family and friends about overheard moments were worth staying up for. (Her older sister forgot to turn one of the devices off, so the night’s longest clip turned out to be a conversation between her and their mother debating the cocktail-hour playlist.)
“Stuff gets very expensive, so I just tried to find a way to do it in a reasonable way, and it’s very cool to have it in your hands,” Ms. Snyder said.
For couples who are willing to pay more, some small companies have been popping up online and advertising on social media to meet demand, offering camcorder rentals and video editing services.
After seeing a TikTok ad, Ms. Woodell hired Wedding Weekender, a company in Denver. In the past six months, its founder, Anne Marie Carroll, 29, has booked more than 600 couples. For $649, clients can rent a Sony ultra-high-definition 4K camcorder for their wedding weekend, receive all the raw footage and get a five-minute edited wedding video.
“I actually had to quit work and take this over full time because of just the crazy demand for it from couples,” Ms. Carroll said, who used to work in advertising and started the company as a side hustle last May.
While the trend speaks to Gen Z’s penchant for “nostalgia tech,” choosing a camcorder over paying for a videographer reflects how some younger couples are spending less on weddings. According to a study from the Knot wedding website, the average cost for a wedding videographer is about $2,300.
Some video professionals have noticed the shift, too.
Molly Lumsden, 27, a wedding videographer and content creator, is also a founder of Handheld Studio, a Los Angeles company similar to Wedding Weekender. Couples can rent camcorders for their wedding day, have the footage edited into a short video and receive all the footage.
“I just kind of noticed this trend among older Gen Zers and young millennials really gravitating toward that authentic behind-the-scenes content and wanting to relive it all very quickly,” said Ms. Lumsden, who charges a $649 rental fee (which includes editing) for a 2010 Sony Handycam.
Ms. Lumsden usually shoots weddings using both an iPhone and a camcorder. Even before starting her company last April, she began bringing an extra camcorder to weddings to give to the groomsmen after noticing some would clam up when she would try to film them getting ready.
“I’m like, OK, well, I know these guys like have a personality, but they’re not really going to show that to me,” Ms. Lumsden said.
Other wedding videographers and content creators have been shifting their approaches to meet the demand for more authentic moments by offering a documentary-style approach to wedding videos, with guests sharing anecdotes about the couple.
But for some recent newlyweds, the best wedding video may be from before they were born.
Kennedy Shaw, 25, a school psychologist from Parker, Pa., spent months before her wedding in Bannister, Mich., watching her parents’ 1992 camcorder video — recorded by a family friend her father had paid $100 — “more times than I could count.”
For her own wedding video, she chose to hire a professional, but she still aimed for that same fly-on-the-wall feel. “Kind of similar to my parents’ video,” she said.
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