Austin Olsen

I knew Austin before COS did

We were working the same weddings back when I was still playing saxophone in bands. Different job for me, same rooms, same long Saturdays - and he was already good at this then. That is a longer runway than most vendor recommendations have behind them.

The other thing I would point at is not on his website. I run into Austin at concerts constantly. He is a music person, genuinely, off the clock. My honest opinion is that this shows up in the work: someone who actually listens is going to treat the music in your film as something to cut with rather than something to lay underneath. For a wedding film I would take that over almost any technical spec.

A specialist, and that is the point

We will be straight about our own bias here. COS sells photo and video as a bundle with the DJ, and our photo and video work is handled by a team we trust completely.

Austin is a different kind of option, and we would rather tell you that than pretend otherwise. He is video only. Thirteen-plus years of it, all of it weddings, with eleven consecutive Couples' Choice awards behind him. If the film is the thing you care most about - if you are the couple who is going to actually rewatch it every year - a specialist is a real advantage.

The distinction he is drawing there is the whole argument for hiring someone who does this full time. A recording captures what happened. A film decides what mattered, and that decision gets made in the edit, weeks after everybody has gone home.

Why the DJ and the videographer have to get along

Here is the part nobody tells couples, and it is the most practical reason we are happy to recommend a good videographer.

Your wedding film's audio mostly comes from us. The vows, the toasts, the officiant - that sound is running through the DJ's system, and the cleanest way for a videographer to capture it is to take a feed straight off our board rather than pointing a shotgun mic at a speaker from thirty feet away. A videographer who knows to ask, and a DJ who has the output ready, is the difference between a film where you can hear your own vows and one where you cannot.

The same goes for lighting. We are throwing colored uplighting around a dark room all night, and a camera reads that very differently than your eye does. Someone who has worked beside DJs for thirteen years already knows to bring his own light and where to stand so our beams are not blowing out his shot.

None of that is glamorous. It is just the difference between vendors who have done this together and vendors who are meeting for the first time in your reception.

What he offers

He publishes his pricing openly on his own site, which we like. Rates change, so check with him directly rather than trusting a number on our page.

Rooms we have both worked

His portfolio runs through the same St. Augustine venues our Saturdays do.

Is a wedding video actually worth it?

We are DJs, so take this with the appropriate grain of salt: video is the thing couples most often skip and most often wish they had not.

The reason is specific. Photographs are what your wedding looked like. A film is what it sounded like - your grandfather's voice in a toast, the exact way your partner's voice cracked during the vows, the noise a room makes when a hundred and fifty people lose it at the same time. Those are the things that go first from memory, and a photograph cannot hold any of them.

If the budget genuinely will not stretch, the ceremony-only option exists for a reason. It covers the fifteen minutes you are least likely to remember clearly and most likely to want back.