Last week, 28-year-old Kelli Patterson announced her recent engagement to longtime boyfriend Steve Boyd with a beautiful engagement video. Unfortunately, they spent so much on the production of the video that it left her with only enough money to have the ceremony in a hotel conference center on the side of Route 93 in Methuen, Massachusetts.
Most of the three-and-a-half minute video’s $40,000 budget was spent on the full-time camera crew that Patterson hired to follow her around for the six weeks leading up to the proposal.
“I didn’t know exactly when he would pop the question, but I knew I had to have the moment captured on film so I could put it on the internet,” says Patterson. “Oh and also so I could like, cherish the memory forever and stuff.”
Between the crew, camera equipment, craft services and the actors she hired to play “hotter versions of my friends,” Patterson quickly tore through the $70,000 budget her parents had generously set aside for the wedding. Now she has no choice but to get married in a hotel conference center in between a Scholastic book fair and a middle school chess tournament, which will be held on a Friday night.
Still, her friends on social media hailed the video as one of the loveliest engagement videos they’ve ever seen.
“I thought it was a really lovely touch that she had the whole thing shot on 70mm film,” said Arielle Marquez, a close friend of the bride to be. “And that she had an original score plus two full musical numbers. Also the art direction was gorgeous. Anyway I’m not going to the wedding but I wish her all the best.”
In addition to being held at the conference center of a three star hotel, the reception is being catered by Panera.
“But the video did get over 1,300 likes, so…” says Kelli.
Kelli has issued a complete social media blackout for the ceremony itself and has requested that in lieu of presents, her guests just never tell anyone what the wedding looked like.
