Very First Wedding
 

Well, I shot my very first wedding this weekend for some friends. I haven't had a chance to review all of my footage yet, but i am pretty confident it turned out okay. I'm only 20 and don't have excellent equipment yet, and i used my Canon ZR85, my mom's Sony TRV 740 and a the groom's JVC GRD22. I know that it won't be excellent quality but for my first attempt hopefully it will be promising enough i can graduate to a higher qualitly camcorder. For my audio, i used my 12" powerbook G4 with garageband and hooked it into the church's soundboard, i picked up all the music and the preist excellent but not the bride and groom, i can hear them but i'm gonna have to raise the volume and figure out how to reduce the hum.

If any of you have any tips, tricks or advise, i'd appreciate it greatly. If i do enjoy this hobby what kind of camcorder will i need and any audio equipment.

Try to invest in a set of wireless mics which will piock up good sound from the B&G. Also start small and think big. Try to be creative with the equipment you have and good things will happen.

Hey Craig,
Iam right there with you, Iam 19, okay a year younger, but hey...anyway, When I compared wireless mike to wired, I decided to go with wired (cheaper, but still payed a lot 'cause of good equipment), I hooked an Azden condenser (can't remember the exact model # right now) to an XLR cable and ran it into my camera via the BeachTek DXA-6. The mike was near the b&g but behind the baptismal area, and picked up great sound from them. I was able to splice it in to my final edit quite easily (well splicing audio isn't exactly easy) now this may be a bit to much for your Optura, I am not sure if the BeachTek will hook into but you can check
Cost: about $700
For the wireless I was looking at it would have been $879

Of course this it a big jump, so instead you can hook a condenser mike onto the groom and have it run into an iRiver on the groom and record the ceremony and splice later. Cost:$200-$300 for iRiver, $60-$150 (countryman B3) for mike. I use this way every now and then. Especially when I know they are going to be moving around quite a bit, the only reason I use the other way, is because I can monitor as it runs into my camera on one channel and on the other channel for a mike near my camera.

Secondly, you can upgrade to a Canon GL2, 3-chip is much better quality, this is what I use. Right now I only offer one camera coverage, but I do offer the family the option of having me edit "their brother's camera footage" into my final production. Plus it's always a good idea to have an extra camera in case you run outtw of battery or something, that reminds me have several batteries or a couple of LONG batteries.

Do a search for newbie's to weddings, and maybe you can even find the story of my first disasterous wedding :)
Sorry got a bit off track, hope this helps.