13 April, 2018
The videos on Love Stories TV website have drama, romance, and beautiful clothes mixed with costly settings and highly technical camera shots.
Is it Hollywood or is it real life? Sometimes the line seems to disappear.
Love Stories TV shows videos of people getting married and taking part in different events leading up to the big moment: their wedding day.
Many modern-day wedding videos now compete for production values with Hollywood movies.
Rachel Silver is the founder and head of Love Stories TV, a website for watching and sharing wedding videos.
Silver says she got the idea for the site from talking to women she worked with. They told her how they had begun to watch wedding videos with their girlfriends one night and could not stop.
Silver remembers looking at some videos herself.
"I was thinking this is the best content I've ever seen . . . It's real people, real stories, but professional production."
Silver says Love Stories TV now has thousands of wedding films from around the world. Some come from newlyweds. Filmmakers also offer videos to the site.
The videos often include information about the videographers, food, flower providers, clothing makers and other services used. One can watch the videos just for fun. But they also can help people in planning for their own wedding day.
Wedding services information is searchable on the site by subject, including place, religion, and culture.
Karly Carrow got married last December. She said she had no problems sharing her video with Love Stories TV. She said it took 30 seconds to post the film.
Carrow said she wanted to make things easier for others planning a wedding. She said she thinks people struggle about budgeting for a wedding video.
"Hopefully," she said "they'll be inspired to spend the money and understand the importance and the value in the long run."
So who exactly is watching the videos on Love Stories TV? Is there really an audience for the wedding videos of strangers?
Rachel Silver said users of the website are mostly young and female.
"Many of our viewers have grown up on reality TV, The Bachelor has been on television their entire lives . . . It's about the love story. Inevitably in a wedding film, it comes out how you met, how you fell in love . . . they interview the friends and the family members..."
In the future, Silver plans to offer a targeted marketing service for wedding-related businesses. They will be able to pay monthly to reach viewers. Love Stories TV is also partnering with companies, like the menswear business Bonobos.
Critics may dismiss the married couples on Love Stories TV as self-congratulatory. But, Silver argues that posting videos is no different from publishing wedding announcements in The New York Times or Town & Country magazine.
Silver said she wishes she had documented her own wedding like those with videos on Love Stories TV.
"All of their family and friends and the people they love the most are surrounding them and that only happens to you a handful of times in your entire life."
I'm Caty Weaver.
VOA's Trina Trinh reported this story. Caty Weaver adapted her report for Learning English. George Grow was the editor.
_____________________________________________________________
Words in This Story
dramatic – adj. a situation or series of events that is exciting and that affects people's emotions
romance – n. the feeling of being in love
inspire – v. to make (someone) want to do something : to give (someone) an idea about what to do or create
audience – n. the people who watch, read, or listen to something
inevitable – adj. sure to happen
interview – v. to question or talk with (someone) in order to get information or learn about that person