It's been a totally amazing week here at 4 Life Films....we've been in the Sun and the Telegraph. I gave a live interview on Radio 5 Live and another on the Chris Evans Show on Radio 2. The local media hasn't neglected us either. We've been featured in the Yorkshire Evening Post and will be in the Halifax Courier, hopefully on Monday. But to tell you the whole story we need to rewind a few months to when Caroline and Andy (seen in the photos above, which incidentally were taken by the brilliant Sean of Angels Image in Sowerby Bridge) first got in touch!

Caroline and Andy got in touch with 4 Life Films to see if I'd be able to do a "marryoke" for their wedding video. I'd never done a marryoke before but I had seen some and I'd been itching to have a go. So I said yes. I imagined it would be fairly straight forward. Perhaps a Perfect Day video...? Little did I know.

I went round to visit them to discuss their plans and was stunned when Andy got out a copy of the Disney film, "Enchanted" and proceeded to show me a huge song and dance number set in Central Park. The song was "That's How You Know" featuring Amy Adams. I'd never heard of Enchanted, Amy Adams or the song.

It was a bit of a tall order, but I like a challenge. I thought that I probably had the necessary skills to make a marryoke - after all I used to be a primary music teacher so was more than capable of getting people to sing in time - if not in tune! I'd made a few music videos when I worked on BBC1's Heaven and Earth Show, including one with Dolly Parton featuring the John Lennon song, Imagine.

I spent hours and hours planning the filming. Just as when you plan a music video or a TV programme, I worked out every single shot, and, crucially, the transitions between the shots. I watched Enchanted over and over, analysing every scene. I visited the venue, which was crucial for the look and feel of the film. Recreating New York's Central Park in Wakefield wasn't going to be easy but fortunately Caroline and Andy had chosen Waterton Park Hotel. It was in a spectacular setting, with a lake and a bridge, which would be great for the marryoke film- it was even set on a lake. There's a scene in the song with Amy Adams in a boat but Caroline didn't fancy getting in one of the hotel's rowing boats in case her dress got wet.


Everything was storyboarded out, Caroline and Andy had explained the plan to their guests and bought the props and we were all raring to go.

We recorded part of the marryoke before the ceremony whilst Caroline was getting ready. Then it was time for the wedding ceremony itself. As Caroline and Andy were saying their vows, I could see it growing darker and darker outside. The rain began to fall so hard that we could hear it on the windows. I wasn't hopeful that the marryoke could go ahead.


After the ceremony, Caroline and Andy had arranged to get everyone seated pretty much straight away for the speeches meal. Caroline's dad began with a really funny speech. He produced Caroline's first baby grow and an alarm clock to help him stick to the ten minutes allocated per speech. Andy and Caroline were determined to allow enough time for their marryoke!


At last, with the speeches, meal and cake cutting over, it was time to get started. The only problem was, it was still raining. Caroline and Andy decided they wanted to go ahead anyway, so with a large rain umbrella and a raincoat on the camera, we headed outside. Some of the scenes had to be completely rethought - there was no way Andy and Caroline could do the picnic scene on the grass so we staged it on one of the tables instead.

For some of the dancing scenes, Caroline had to remove her shoes - it was simply too wet and slippy to be dancing about in her wedding heels!

Despite the weather, we managed to finish filming and even had time for a drink and a meal with the photographers. Then I headed home to tackle the edit. I was really excited to see how it would all fit together.

A few weeks later, there was a surprise waiting for me when I got in. Not just flowers from Interflora, but a box of truffles and a lovely bottle of wine. For a few moments, I thought I had a secret admirer (note to all secret admirers: flowers, chocolates and wine all welcome!) but I was even more thrilled to find they were from Caroline and Andy, with a thank you message for the video. I was really touched - it's always nice to be appreciated and to know that a couple really love their finished film.

Over the coming months, Caroline and I kept in touch on Facebook and we shared the occasional joke about sending the video to GMTV but we didn't do anything about it. Then about two weeks ago, a journalist contacted me. My former boss from the BBC, the lovely Chris Loughlin, had shown the marryoke to the journalist's father who had in turn shown it to his son. Would I mind if they ran the story? And could I send pictures? I consulted Caroline and Andy who agreed that it was ok with them, but none of us really believed anything would happen.

Then last Friday, I went off to London for my first weekend off working in over a year. I was already excited at the thought of rekindling a bit of a social life and having some leisure time. Then the mobile rang. It was a journalist from the Chris Evans Show wondering if I would agree to a live interview on that night's show. I was baffled. But then she told me that the marryoke was on the Telegraph's website! At about 5.30 p.m., Andy and I waited nervously - well, I was nervous anyway - on our respective mobiles for the interview. I was in the glamourous location of the forecourt of a garage off the North Circular - well, there was nowhere else to pull over. After the interview, I was shaking like a leaf.

Next morning, after a fantastic night out, I woke up bleary-eyed to the sound of the mobile. It was my friend Rob ringing. Apparently, our home phone had been ringing off the hook all morning with press enquiries. The story was in the Sun newspaper and magazines and television companies were all clamouring for the story. As someone whose job it used to be to scour the daily papers for stories and contact people in them to see if they wanted to appear on live TV, it felt odd to be on the receiving end for a change. Richard and Judy, GMTV and our local ITV news, Calendar, had all phoned.

I saw a few of my friends for lunch and drinks on Saturday, then headed back north to start sorting out all the phone messages and the requests for tapes of the clip. On the way back, I stopped for a few minutes in a lay-by off the M1 (again, I love the glamour of it all!) to give an interview on Radio 5 Live. This one went better - I wasn't shaking and I got a bit longer to speak, but I was surprised to get a bit of a grilling about why anyone would want to do this on their wedding day!

After a busy weekend, on Monday I met up with Caroline and Andy at Yorkshire TV to give two interviews on Calendar, our local news programme. It was strange being on the other side of the camera, being questioned by the presenters. I looked back on all those times that I'd said to nervous contributors before they went on air, "It's easy! Just like having a chat!" It isn't and it's not.

With the weather being so awful at the moment, Caroline and Andy have decided to turn down Richard and Judy but they are still showing a clip of the film on Tuesday's programme. When I decided to start 4 Life Films, I never dreamed it would be famous! Watch this space!

February is a slightly quieter time in the world of 4 Life Films wedding videos.

I'm really busy making 9 TV programmes, which are very exciting but I can't write more about them as I'm bound by the rules of the rather well-known broadcaster I'm working for!

So I thought this was a really good opportunity to tell anyone who is interested the story of 4 Life Films and how I set it up!

Years ago, when I was a trainee researcher at the BBC, I used to have lunch every day with my good friend and fellow trainee, Michelle Groom (now Michelle Riley as she has married the lovely Dan!) We would constantly dream up schemes for running small businesses and writing books and that kind of thing. Always planning and plotting something. During that time, I wrote my second book, Easy Wedding Planner, which was published by the Guild of Master Craftsmen. It was a really exciting time, seeing my name in print.



Both Michelle and I could shoot - we're talking tv cameras here, not rifles! Michelle's dad was a rather well-known cameraman in his day so it was in her genes and I'd learnt at college and had shot my first documentary, Changing Robes, myself for ITV Granada. We'd also done the BBC training courses. So it seemed fairly natural that one of the business ideas we dreamt up was wedding videos.

Fast forward a couple of years and Michelle and Dan decided to tie the knot themselves. Michelle got a couple of wedding video showreels from various local companies and we watched them one night over a bottle of wine. Some were fantastic, really professional and obviously made with a lot of care. Others, however, were rather amateur video like - wobbly cameras, poor picture quality, you couldn't hear the sound. One particularly amused us: at the end of every scene, the picture kind of folded up into a paper aeroplane and whizzed off, revealing the next shot. It was the sort of thing we'd tried at college on the first day, when investigating all the effects that we could do in the edit.

We felt sure we could do better than most of them and that we could aspire to do as well as the best of them, and we continued to chat about setting up the business.

I was, by this time, no longer a researcher and was directing films for the Heaven and Earth Show on BBC. It was an exciting time and I was very busy and didn't really have time to pursue the wedding video idea. You can see the interview that I directed with the former Sex Pistol John Lynan (aka Johnny Rotten).

Fast forward a couple more years, and Michelle was pregnant with Lily and I'd made the bold decision to become a freelance director. During a spell at Teachers TV making several lovely programmes (you can see one here), I decided to give the wedding video idea a proper go. I offered my services on an expenses only basis to readers on the Money Saving Expert forum. I'd met Martin Lewis when he'd been a guest on Heaven and Earth and he'd even had a free book giveaway when Easy Wedding Planner was published, so it felt like the right place. I was inundated with offers but chose three couples who sounded lovely in their emails and fixed up to meet them.

Sian and Rik were my first couple. We clicked straight away and I knew we'd turn out to be good friends. I was the surprise guest at the dinner party they had for their first anniversary! Back to their wedding though....it was at Thorpe Park Hotel in Leeds and Sian looked breathtaking. I think I was probably more nervous than they were! It was a great experience though and I really felt part of their day - especially when Rik mentioned me in his speech - "The BBC are here!" Their photographer was Dan Thubron from 123 Photography and he gave me loads of useful information about setting up a wedding business.

Not long later, I filmed the wedding of Tor and Andy at Holdsworth House - a perfect location for me as it was barely ten minutes drive away. I didn't know such a beautiful old building was tucked away in Halifax. It was an emotional one as Tor cried and I must admit that it brought a tear to my eye too! Tor looked stunning in a very pale blue dress. Once again, I was lucky to be working with an amazing photographer, Gary Micklethwaite. I was a bit in awe of him to be honest - I wouldn't have dreamt that less than a year later, he and his wife would be sitting on my sofa drinking tea and eating sandwiches, whilst filming a local wedding together.

Finally, September brought the last of my "trial" weddings: the wedding of Caroline and Darren. This was my first church wedding, so it was really exciting. Plus I had a second cameraman for the first time, so I wasn't working alone. They got married in a beautiful church in Bingley with a reception in the same hotel and on the same day where several years earlier, Caroline's parents had tied the knot. It was a fantastic day and the guests made us very welcome and even bought us drinks. I met up with wedding DJ Paul who was not only a great DJ (he did this amazing thing with the bride and groom's initials in lights on the floor - it looked great on the video!) but he was also really helpful and gave me lots of hints and tips a few months later when I was designing my first website.



In September, I also left Teachers TV and went back to work for the BBC on a programme called "Christmas Voices", presented by the opera singer Lesley Garrett. It was a great opportunity and lots of fun to be working back on a live weekly show, but it left little time for setting up 4 Life Films.

Once Christmas - and “Christmas Voices” was over – I started to think about the business again. I designed the first 4 Life Films website and started reading up on things like search engine optimization and book-keeping! With a bit of advertising on the internet, I got my first booking: the wedding of Gemma and Paul.

Within 12 hours of arriving home from Rebecca and James' wedding at Southwell, I was heading in the opposite direction up to the north-east for the wedding of Ashley and Richard. Sadly, the weather was being kind. After a beautifully sunny Friday, Saturday dawned grey and drizzly and by the time I'd reached the Morritt Arms along with Andy the second cameraman, it wa
#s pouring down. Leaving Andy to head off to film Richard the groom getting ready, I went along to Ashley's room.

The atmosphere was like a hen party - in a good way. I felt instantly that I'd known Ashley for years and I was offered champagne and made to feel at home. Then the weird coincidences began. Ashley's sister is called Ann - my first name is Ann but I don't use it. She's a teacher and I used to be a teacher and we discovered quite a few other similarities that for both our sakes, I'd best not mention here! We got on like a house on fire and became Facebook friends soon after the wedding.



After a lot of laughter and a bit more champagne, I headed off to the main hall for the ceremony. There I met Richard. He was very nervous and had both the registrar and me in fits laughing!

The wedding was lovely. The laughter continued. It was also very moving - at one point, a tear began to roll down my cheek (I freely admit to being a bit soppy!) and Richard turned to the camera and commented, "Even she's crying!" What I liked most was that it was a very personal ceremony. The registrar was wonderful and it didn't just feel like she was just doing her job - she seemed to genuinely like Ashley and Richard and wanted them to have a special day.

It rained for the photos so we had to stay inside but later, sadly after the photographer had already left for the day, the skies brightened and we went outside and shot a short sequence in the garden ... with lots of kissing! I think this is my favourite part of the film: Ashley and Richard looked very much in love. Sorry, my soppy side coming out again.



And my favourite shot of the whole day - I think Richard was making Ashley laugh on this one:

I was really excited when Rebecca phoned asking me to film her wedding at Southwell Minster in Nottinghamshire. What a spectacular setting!



When she mentioned what a big part music was going to play in the wedding, I was even more excited. As a former music teacher, and with several music videos under my belt including one with Dolly Parton, I love shooting music and appreciate the special skill that goes into shooting music items effectively. Rebecca was having a male voice choir singing before and during the service and her uncle was one of the singers. She'd also booked a jazz band for the reception.

Once again, I asked Mark Higham to be my second camera operator and we set off for Nottinghamshire bright and early. It was a gloriously sunny day and I felt rather excited as I drove down the little country lanes towards Southwell. A beautiful day, a beautiful location.

And it was a beautiful wedding. The bride and groom both looked lovely and the flowers were amazing. Rebecca's uncle introduced himself before the service so I knew who to focus on in the choir. The choir was great - lots of them were ex-miners like my dad so I had a bit of a soft spot for them. Their rendition of "Sunrise sunset" from Fiddler on the Roof was just lovely and almost brought a tear to my eye. What great words for wedding music too! If you don't know it, here's the lyrics.


After the ceremony there was time for a few photos outside the Minster including the crucial confetti shot.


Then it was off to the reception. Rebecca had chosen a beautiful colour scheme of pink and purple roses and everything from the table decorations to the cake and bouquet looked stunning. At every wedding I go to, I find myself thinking, "If I ever get married again, I'll be copying that colour scheme!" It was certainly true at Rebecca and James' wedding!