Melissa + Steve — You are totally my favourite.

We’d like to think that if you met Melis­sa and Steve on any oth­er day in which they weren’t get­ting mar­ried, you would see exact­ly what you see in this film. That’s because their day was sim­ply ooz­ing with per­son­al­i­ty and every­thing just came togeth­er in a way that  allowed us to cre­ate a per­fect por­trait of who these two real­ly are.

We’ll start from the top. We first met Melis­sa and Steve this past win­ter. They’re wed­ding cin­e­matog­ra­phers them­selves and so we imme­di­ate­ly hit it off over cof­fee; talk­ing about our jobs, our indus­try, and our favourite films of the past year. We dis­cussed their day, and with every detail, we became more and more excit­ed about every­thing they had planned.

Now over the next few months, we could­n’t stop run­ning into them every time we were in Toron­to. We’d see them at Tiff Bell Light­box on our way to catch a movie, we’d see Steve on Queen St. West, then Melis­sa in Zara a cou­ple of hours lat­er. See­ing them walk about the city, we real­ized what an inte­gral part of them Toron­to has become, and all the walk­ing around and quick loca­tion changes on the wed­ding day took on a much deep­er mean­ing with­in their film. Along­side the cou­ple, Toron­to is a huge char­ac­ter in this sto­ry and one that is loom­ing over every mile­stone of their day.

One evening, a few weeks before the wed­ding, we met for drinks at the Thomp­son Hotel just before head­ing up to see the rooftop in which they were plan­ning to share their first look, and we heard for the first time about their love for cof­fee. Now we love our cof­fee, and we have friends who are cof­fee fanat­ics, but no one real­ly loves cof­fee as much as Melis­sa and Steve. They went on and on about the dif­fer­ent types of cof­fee they reg­u­lar­ly drink and the dif­fer­ent ways they make it. Steve men­tioned that him and his grooms­men would be head­ing to Ear­ly Bird in the morn­ing to have siphon cof­fee and explained what exact­ly that was. We were so hap­py that their love for cof­fee was nat­u­ral­ly worked into their day and decid­ed we’d def­i­nite­ly have to tag along for that adventure.

We always tell our cou­ples that we ask a lot of very spe­cif­ic ques­tions before the big day because we like to stay ahead of the many sur­pris­es that may arrive on the day of, but on this par­tic­u­lar day, we got one big curve ball thrown our way. We prob­a­bly vis­it­ed the Thomp­son rooftop on three sep­a­rate occa­sions shot list­ing, test­ing light and prepar­ing for what was going to be an incred­i­bly emo­tion­al first look. We had every­thing planned to a t and were lucky to find that con­struc­tion was keep­ing the rooftop emp­ty and pri­vate for Melis­sa and Steve. Well, it just so hap­pened that the rooftop con­struc­tion wrapped the day before the wed­ding and Melis­sa and Steve’s big day was also the first day that the pool was open to the pub­lic. It was may­hem up there, and the orig­i­nal loca­tion was a no-go, but it was so impor­tant to them to have the first look up there that we adjust­ed our plans to a dif­fer­ent part of the rooftop that was a lit­tle more pri­vate and car­ried on. It was a beau­ti­ful moment, and all the crazi­ness washed away as we saw them both embrace for the first time that day.

Off we went to a beau­ti­ful cer­e­mo­ny and recep­tion at the Steam Whis­tle Brew­ery, and rather than write every sin­gle detail about how amaz­ing this wed­ding real­ly was, it’d be far more enter­tain­ing for you to see it for yourself.

One last sto­ry, though! In one of our last meet­ings, Steve asked us if we had ever thought about dif­fer­ent aspect ratios for our films. We men­tioned it had­n’t crossed our minds yet, since we had­n’t met a cou­ple whose sto­ry called for a wider aspect ratio. Just like with Super 8mm which can be some­what overused with no spe­cif­ic story-driven rea­son, we would­n’t want to make a film wider just for the sake of it. But as we thought about it more, we real­ized Melis­sa and Steve’s was the per­fect film to shoot in 2:35:1, with their love for film, their devo­tion to mak­ing films, and the amaz­ing venues and loca­tions we’d be vis­it­ing through­out the day.