We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Joshua Jones and Ally Weisgerber a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Joshua and Ally, appreciate you joining us today. Let’s talk legacy – what sort of legacy do you hope to build?

We want to be known as people who give couples more value than they paid for. We want our couples to feel like they were served well. We hope our legacy is wrapped up in the way that we made people feel, not just what we said or the films we provided. At the end of the day, did we love everyone intentionally that came to us looking for a wedding film? We want people to come looking for a vendor, and leave feeling like they have a friend who understands them.

Joshua, Ally, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

Ally and I got into wedding filmmaking in 2020 after my sister, who is a well established wedding photographer, pushed me to lean into videography after seeing some films I had made on the side as a hobby. She had a wedding that she was shooting for a friend, and pitched the idea to the bride for me to film her wedding. Naturally, I asked Al to film the wedding alongside me since I knew she would be incredibly easy, fun, and intuitive to work with while also having the creative vision and care. We spent months leading up to the wedding watching educational courses, youtube videos, and gathering the equipment we needed. I began to teach Ally how to film on our cameras and she caught on extremely quickly, and has since surpassed me in vision and creativity behind the camera. We filmed that first wedding together in 2020, followed by a few more during the remainder of the year, and we really just fell in love with it. In 2021 as sophomores in college, after cultivating and discovering our style and brand, we officially launched our business together, and we truly feel like it is what we were meant to do.
We believe that marriage is sacred, selfless, and forever — that it calls us to die to ourselves in order to unconditionally love and serve the other person. We believe each and every wedding, love story, and most importantly marriage — are one of a kind, and we want each film to compliment that essence. We offer two different film packages for our couples, with one of them being about a 15 minute film. We find that couples really like that we offer this film as many couples just want to see more of their day once their wedding day is over. In addition to a mini-documentary length film, we also film with a documentary style approach. It’s easy for people to say that they take this approach, but we don’t think many people actually know what that means or what it takes to embody this approach. We desire to be sensitive to the sacred, fresh, and raw moments that take place during a wedding day, and we want to preserve those moments in their original state. We film the whole wedding day handheld, as opposed to an ultra smooth gimbal that many wedding filmmakers use. We have a very minimal setup similar to that of a photographer, so that couples don’t feel like they are on a movie set. We use natural audio and dialogue, in addition to personal vows and kind words. We curate a soundtrack for each film, based on each couple’s music preferences, aesthetic, vibe, mood, and overall feeling that was portrayed during the wedding.
An overall theme that we want couples to know, is that this is completely about them, not us. We do not want to direct, pose, dictate, or produce a film that fits our agenda, preferences, or goals. We love to get to know, listen to, and serve our couples. Many filmmakers strive to make films that other people will want to watch, ones that are entertaining and viral. We aim to please one audience. The couple. The most primary thing that matters to us is that they trust us, feel loved, and feel seen when they receive their film. When a couple reaches out to us about filming their day, we schedule a call with them simply just to chat and answer any questions they might have for us. We also guide them through some questions to ask us, since many people don’t know what to ask. This call allows us to hear from the couple themselves, so that they can feel comfortable with us, and so that they have a space to be heard. We obsess over giving couples the best possible experience throughout their wedding season.
In the end, we just want each couple to feel valued, seen, and inspired – even beyond their wedding day. We strive to craft one of a kind, intentional, artistic, and timeless films that inspire for generations, with unmatched quality and service.

Can you tell us the story behind how you met your business partner?

Ally and I actually met in seventh grade, at our brothers’ baseball game after our parents introduced us. After meeting each other briefly, we both went back to our friends and told them about each other. I even went as far as to call dibs on her, because I knew she would be coming to our school in ninth grade. After some exhaustive flirting efforts, we eventually started dating at the beginning of sophomore year of highschool. We dated throughout highschool, and when we graduated highschool we went to different colleges in different states. For almost four years now, we have been dating long distance, and we finally got engaged in May of 2022. It has truly been the best 6 and a half years we could ask for. During this engagement season and running a business together, we have learned so much about being on the other side of the vendor experience. We now have a first hand experience of what the wedding planning season is like, and have learned how to better serve couple’s who are in the same shoes. We are both graduating from college in May of this year, getting married in June, and plan to travel across the country filming weddings together.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

We like to say that we are creating a visual poem for our couples when we craft their wedding film. We also believe that we are wedding filmmakers, and not just wedding videographers. Videos are taken, films are made, crafted. Filmmaking is an art, and wedding filmmaking is a medium that makes films all the more delicate, nostalgic, and special. It is so rewarding to be able to be trusted with a couple’s weddings, and to then hear back from them that the film is completely representative of them and their day. We get to gift couples with an art piece, a family heirloom that will outlast them. It is such a blessing to be able to match our passion with our couples’ stories, in order to partner to craft a one of a kind, timeless wedding film. A visual poem.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.yonderfilmco.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/yonderfilmco/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLuALOjehlc4CArGQxuUn_g

Image Credits
Some images by Gracie Eddins. Others by Yonder Film Co.