NOT ANOTHER SLIDESHOW

I’m wondering, as they enter the dining room for the wedding breakfast, if guests have the same reaction to seeing a member of staff or panicked-looking best man wrangling the table supporting the projector with the same trepidation as I do?

I’m not trying to put anyone off using A/V, and I’ll certainly sound like I am in the next few minutes, but if I had to take an entirely unscientific guess of what’s worked over what hasn’t, based on 20 years of watching speeches, I’d say the 80/20 rule applies here, only, in this case, 20 is the success rate. 

An audio-visual set-up often means one thing to me. Long, possibly self-indulgent, especially if it’s a best man’s show, speeches full of jibes only a fraction of those in the room will understand.

Look at it this way, pun intended. How do you feel when a host at a dinner-party says, “Let me just grab the laptop and go through all the pictures from our recent holiday in Alicante? I’d say you’d be up for, say, half a dozen or so, but half an hour or more – you’ll probably feel a tad trapped and wish you’d stayed in to watch darts on TV. And that’s exactly how guests can feel on a wedding day. Yes, it can work, but I’m not convinced it’s a crowd pleaser, and I’ve witnessed this over and over across two decades photographing these wonderful events. For balance, here’s 3 pros, 3 cons when it comes to a/v at a wedding during the speeches, and then I’ll speak from experience about what I really see.

Right the pros.

1. Visual wow factor: A well-made video or photo montage can add real emotional punch.

2. Involves absent guests: Recorded messages from loved ones who couldn’t attend? Beautiful. And often very moving.

3. Breaks up the monologue: Not everyone’s a natural speaker. A/V gives nervous speakers a break and keeps the audience engaged.

And the cons.

1. Tech never fails… until it does: Projectors don’t work. Cables go missing. Speakers squeal. It’s like inviting Murphy’s Law to the wedding.

2. Longer than it feels: What felt like a two-minute clip in your kitchen becomes a seven-minute epic when 90 people are waiting for pudding.

3. Room Energy Killer: Nothing saps momentum like waiting in silence for a screen to load or someone to “just find the file.”

From my experience though, I’d like you to picture the scene. All your guests are sat there, forks resting politely on plates, ready to laugh, maybe even shed a tear, and then... it inevitably happens. The laptop won't talk to the projector. The Bluetooth speaker suddenly develops stage fright. Uncle Tony’s heartfelt video message from Australia? Well, you can hear about every fourth word, and it sounds like he’s broadcasting from the bottom of a pond, so what was the point anyway?

Now, don't get me wrong, because as I say, A/V stuff can be wonderfully received. When it works. A short, snappy video message? Great. A quick montage of embarrassing childhood photos? Okay, acceptable.

But here’s the truth nobody tells you until it’s too late, so hopefully this is doing the job early: A/V is a minefield. Wires that don’t fit, screens that aren’t bright enough, microphones that pick up everything except the speaker's voice, and when the tech wobbles, the room wobbles with it.

Weddings are about flow: natural moments unfolding, not everyone sitting awkwardly while Gary, who’s basically the off-duty doctor of the tech world, steps forward to save the day. Gary has a gaming rig at home (which he’d rather be on, if he weren’t busy enjoying your free wine) and now finds himself wrestling with an HDMI lead that refuses to talk to the laptop. (Spoiler alert: it’s always the lead. Always.)

Let’s assume Gary has managed to make it all work, what happens with most A/V presentations? Well I’d say roughly half turn into long long long long long best man photo montages of his best mate drunk. You can feel one hundred guests rolling their eyes. The other half, I told you this wasn’t scientific are fatherly outpourings of love for his daughter by way of every photograph he has made of her growing up.

This usually starts with him saying he’s made “a little something” for his speech, then rolls out a thirty-minute slideshow backed by My Heart Will Go On. By slide 46, somewhere between her first day at school and a blurry hamster funeral, half the room has emotionally checked out, and the other half are googling how to disable a projector without being noticed.

After all this, if you ARE tempted to go down the techy route, keep it simple. Pre-test it, hard. Keep your video or slideshow under two minutes. And have a real, actual person ready to step in if it all goes pear-shaped.

In reality THE most powerful speech is just you, a microphone, and a deep breath. No slides, no videos, no "it worked fine on my laptop this morning."