Something borrowed, something blue, something webcast

In the digital age, even the most sacred ceremonies are going online.

Blue Mountain Weddings, a local photography, videography and wedding entertainment company, recently added a webcasting service that allows couples to broadcast their wedding ceremonies over the Internet.
Owners Ran and Linda Henry started the service this summer, hoping to tap into a market of couples with friends or relatives who can’t come to the wedding due to illness, infirmity or high travel costs.

“We’re seeing more and more people, unfortunately, with guest lists lower,” said Ran Henry. “We believe we have hit this at exactly the right time.”
Wedding webcasts are already available for island marriages, where travel costs are a hindrance. Several businesses offer the service in the United States, including Idostream.com, Vowcast.com and Webcastmywedding.net.

The Henrys say theirs is the only business in the Charlottesville area
offering the service. It took them six months of research and an investment of more than $5,000 to set up the service.

“It was a lot harder than we ever imagined,” Ran Henry said.
Henry teamed up with his booking agent, Chris Munson of 20 South Productions, and a technical expert, Doug Bade, to work out the logistics of webcasting. Now they have a working webcast system, which Henry said is attracting interest.
Blue Mountain Weddings does everything from site testing to filming to broadcasting — for a price. One live webcast costs $1,000, including on-demand viewing, and it’s $1,500 to include a DVD.

For venues without wireless Internet connections, including many churches, live webcasting isn’t an option. The alternative is on-demand webcasting, in which weddings are filmed and put on the Internet within a few hours, allowing guests to watch the ceremony anywhere in the world for up to 30 days.

That is the option Kate and Bob Sivinski chose for their wedding on July 12. Kate Sivinski decided to use the service at the last minute to allow her grandmother, her sick uncle and her husband’s grandmother to see the wedding from their homes in Chicago, Ohio and Florida.
Kate Sivinski was concerned the video camera would be a distraction during the wedding, but Ran Henry kept it in the back to capture the perspective of an audience member. Afterwards, he took the newlyweds aside and asked them to say a few words in the camera for their relatives.
“It captured our feelings right after the ceremony,” Kate Sivinski said. “We were both really excited … it was fun to watch our reactions.”

The Sivinskis’ relatives received an e-mail invitation the day after the wedding, downloaded the video and watched it in Windows Media Player. Kate Sivinski also sent the link to people who had attended the wedding, including her parents.
“It ended up being a big hit,” she said.

Viewers need to have high-speed connections to watch the videos, which are shot with professional video cameras. Right now the video quality is something like watching an old VHS tape, Bade said. He expects faster Internet speeds will allow for higher quality videos in the coming years.
While the Henrys have done only four on-demand webcasts and one live webcast, they have received numerous requests for the service.

“It’s still far from reached its potential,” Munson said. “If the economy doesn’t get any better, I think people will start seeing the value in it even more.”