Love Stories, Mango Tree-style

To video or not to video...?  One of the many decisions you will make in planning and budgeting your wedding, is whether or not to hire a professional videographer to document your celebration.  For most of our brides and grooms, the answer has been, for whatever reason, no.  I have to admit, I myself am not a huge fan of the traditional wedding video - for our wedding, we were gifted a lovely slideshow of pictures on DVD (gracias, Johnny!) and it has always held so much magic and joy whenever we slide it in and get all teary-eyed with love and nostalgia. But these days, there is so much more to the telling of a wedding story - a love story - in moving pictures.  Cinematographers and videographers, much like photographers in the wedding field [everyone, for that matter... let's face it people - it is a GOOD time to get married; there is literally a wedding renaissance happening and the creativity that flows from every nook and cranny of the wedding world is phenomenal and overwhelming! But I digress...] have pushed the art of documenting weddings to a higher form of storytelling - crafting gorgeous, ethereal short films that make you the stars you are in your love affair, your lives.  From adorable save-the-date video announcements to B+W film shoots to of course capturing all the details and moments of the wedding ceremony and festivities, the options are endless and these are definitely not your mama's wedding videos.

Sayulita resident Darrin Polischuk of The Mango Tree Project is offering up his video-magic skills to tell your Sayulita wedding love story.  Darrin, his wife Paulina, and their son Niko moved to Sayulita a few years ago to, like many of us, live a better quality of life with the people we love most.  They make the most adorable hand-printed organic tees, prints, bags and other one-of-a-kind-i-must-scoop-this-up-right-now sorts of goodies which they sell in their downtown street stall a block off the beach (Paulina's designs would be perfect for a Sayulita save-the-date or wedding invite). Darrin - who worked in broadcast video for years before migrating south - has been shooting surf videos and color-of-life stuff around Sayulita, and is now available to shoot your wedding or family story - capturing the beauty and feel of magic moments in time with beautiful shots set to meaningful music.

Here is a showcase reel that Darrin put together to show off some of his favorite shots:

From Darrin, on his inspiration, his background, and his journey to now:

"One snowy winter while producing TV shows in Whistler BC Canada for The Outdoor Life Network and Fox Sports I had a vision of where I wanted to go in this life. Not a corporate TV office in NYC or LA. Instead the vision of a little Mexican surf town surrounded by lush, tropical awesomeness and some nice warm water waves reverberated inside. I was swinging on a hamock with a beautiful girl and a baby, raising a family, living a healthy and simple life. Less traffic, more fruit & fish and time in the ocean was the basic idea. I had never even heard of Sayulita..but I knew what I wanted.

I forgot the dream for years while producing TV gigs in Orange County to make my Audi payments. I awoke from the Californication haze one day while sitting in traffic on the 405. Then I met and quickly married an amazing Mexican girl. I remembered the dream.

I have directed, produced and edited video for Major TV networks and Fortune 500 companies, worked with action sports super stars, artists and musicians too many to list. People doing something for a reason, with passion, has been and will always be my style.

Now I am in Sayulita, living, laughing, loving, surfing and producing some videos for clients big and small. I am a man with some camera gear, Final Cut Pro, and head full of experience and ideas for hire."

And a little swoon-worthy peek into Darrin, Paulina, and Niko's dream life:

This beautiful and talented family is one of many examples of the fabulous people and creative energies we are surrounded with here in Sayulita - we feel so blessed to have so many friends with similar values and dreams, who inspire us with their own unique take on living, creating, and loving life.

We didn't have a wedding video ourselves (though I suspect I might do it differently given all of the great options today), but now we have even more love to share on camera, so we'll definitely be enlisting Darrin's skills to shoot a family video for us this fall - we all need our movie star moment, no?

xo, SDW