7 tips for Zoom weddings. I believe you never thought about #6
Did you have to postpone one of your most amazing adventures this year?
CoVID has impacted our lives, plans and adventures like it or not, it is a reality. Imagine if you were organizing one of the biggest adventures, including lots of people, travel, venues… a hint, a wedding.
We started organizing ours about a year ago, checking venues, food, officiant, and coordinating hotels and travel for our friends and family coming from around the world into our big day, scheduled for April.
March came, international travel banned, airlines and hotels are a turmoil. Now time to start checking with our guests, the venue and others related, and we managed to move everything to May. We made it! Well, that is what we thought.
Quarantine became a reality, most of the places we were planning to use were worried. And we had to cut the number of guests because of social distancing, and everything started to turn into a complex mix of emotions and difficulties… we decided to postpone again.
May the force be with you my friend, and we decided to make another change. What if we do an extremely small ceremony, 5 couples plus us and we broadcast everything via Zoom?
I have to say, it was a blast. Now we were able to have more than 400 people attending our ceremony, friends and family literally from pole to pole (Alaska to Patagonia), and believe it or not, from the 5 continents! Thanks to our friends that woke up at 5am to join us!
For those who might be thinking you will feel alone, and kind of distant from your friends and family joining, I should say I thought the same… but we felt completely different, it was like having all of them there a couple of feet away with us. It was close to magical.
Here a couple of recommendations of those who are planning to broadcast your big day:
1.- Consider the pro version of Zoom (for the benefits and recording features) and:
- Record the “meeting” in the cloud
- Setup a Waiting Room without a passcode, to make it easier to join
- Send the link, and the multiple ways to connect to the meeting. Include also the dial-in numbers for the countries where your guest will be joining. Especially if they will be using a laptop.
- Have a friend to manage the call, ask him to join 20 to 30 minutes earlier and give him the administration. If your friend will be remote, you may want to start 45 minutes earlier, all sort of things may happen.
- Mute everyone who joins the call… believe me, it will help a LOT!
2.- Have a laptop hooked to a large screen and a speaker, so you can see and interact with your guests.
- Have the computer muted, this is just as a monitor to see what is happening, your phone will be the camera and microphone. The computer may cause return!
3.- Get a good tripod for your phone. Keep in mind that the distance between the phone and the officiant/groom/bride to the microphone works great up to 6 ft away (1.80 meters).
4.- Keep your phone plugged if possible, broadcasting consumes a lot of battery.
5.- After the ceremony, spend some time with your virtual guests thanking them for showing up.
6.- If you are doing the easy login to the event, please have a friend to take snapshots to the people connected. That way you will have their names, also a nice “souvenir” that you can print (even works great for Magnets).
7.- Enjoy your big day!
Leave a comment
Comments will be approved before showing up.
