Wedding speeches on film: why the sound matters more than the camera

Here’s a dirty secret of wedding films: most of the bad ones aren’t badly shot. They’re badly recorded.

The pictures look fine. Then the best man stands up, and you get a muffled mumble under the clatter of cutlery and someone’s nan coughing. The vows sound like they were recorded from the car park. That’s the bit that ruins a film, because your speeches and vows are the parts you’ll actually want to hear again.

Why I’m obsessed with sound

Before weddings, a lot of my work was filming podcasts and brand content. Podcasts are nothing but sound. Nobody forgives bad audio on a podcast. So I learned the hard way how to record voices properly in rooms that weren’t built for it.

Wedding venues are some of the worst rooms there are for audio: big echoey barns, wind on a clifftop ceremony, a hundred people chatting, a DJ setting up in the corner. That’s exactly why the sound has to be planned, not hoped for.

How I record vows and speeches

• A tiny mic on the groom (or whoever’s at the front) during the ceremony. You won’t notice it. It picks up both of you clearly.
• A separate recorder at the lectern or on the mic stand for readings and speeches, so every word is captured at the source.
• A feed from the venue PA or DJ where possible, as a back-up.
• Everything recorded twice. If one source fails, the other doesn’t.

Then it all gets cleaned up in the edit: background noise down, voices up, levels evened out, so your quiet uncle is as clear as your loud best man.

Five questions to ask any videographer

1. How do you record the vows?
2. How do you record the speeches?
3. What happens if a mic fails?
4. Can I hear a full speech from a recent wedding, not just a trailer?
5. Will I get the speeches as their own edit?

If the answer to number one is “the camera mic,” keep looking.

A tip for your speech-givers

Tell them to speak to the room, not to their notes, and to hold the mic close if there is one. Ten seconds of advice that makes a big difference on film.

Want to hear the difference for yourself? Watch my films with the sound up, then check your date.