The big days: weddings, confirmations, and the films that go with them

These are the occasions with the longest planning and the most people who feel entitled to an opinion. A film helps exactly because it fixes the wording once and then sends it to everybody unchanged.

The wedding

Two names are the heart of it, and the film should give them equal weight. The template that puts a name large and one line beneath it holds both names as one, with the date under them. The film is either shown at the party or sent with the invitation, and the date and the place come last.

Most people looking for a wedding film are looking for a person with a camera, which is a different purchase from a drawn film, and it is worth knowing which one you are making.

The confirmation

A confirmation gathers the card, the present, the invitation and the song into one week. A film can give each sponsor their own line in turn, one paragraph each in a script, so the greeting is shared instead of written by one person, and the date stands at the end.

Engagement and the silver wedding

An engagement film exists for the same evening it happened, which makes it the shortest deadline of any occasion. The silver and golden wedding films go the other way: they are ordered by grown children, in secret, and the years of the marriage are the number the film is built on. If you have one photograph from the wedding and one from now, the distance between them is the point.

What these four ask of you

• Names, spelled the way you spell them. A name is the one thing in a film that cannot be approximated.
• A date, a place, or both. These come last, on their own, rather than in a paragraph.
• The wording, if there is wording. A greeting written by the people it is from is the difference between a film and a template.
• Photographs only if you want them. For a silver wedding, one from then and one from now.
• An agreed version. This is the part that takes the time. A review link helps: send one version to both families, and each can pin notes to moments and answer Approved or Changes needed, with no account.

Making it in Nine

A film of your own comes with a plan; the free part of Nine lets you look and try, and never makes a film. On a plan there are several ways in. Start from a template puts your own words into one of Nine's templates, a name and one line, a card that holds still, or three points, and adds nothing to them. A script takes the words you already have, in your order, and each paragraph becomes a scene. Just an idea needs only a sentence. A voice recording makes the film run as long as you talk, with your voice as its sound. On the Film plan a film is up to 30 seconds.

The film is drawn, so it needs no photograph. If it should show your own photographs, the plans with a library, Film + Transparent and above, make a film from your own pictures, placed as they are and never retouched. Music is added afterwards in the chamber, calm or with a beat, and goes into the video file when you save. Nine sends nothing to anybody: you get the video file, or a private review link, and you decide who sees it.