5 Jurassic World wedding film ideas with real scale

In the 1993 film the gates are the moment the tour cars leave the ordinary world behind: two huge doors, torches burning either side, a road opening into the jungle. A Jurassic World wedding film can borrow that feeling, but only if the reveal gets the room it needs. Squeeze it into a gap between the speeches and some phone footage and it looks like a mistake.

Scale is the point with this franchise. So the five ideas below are really five places to put one big opener, each with an honest note on when it is the wrong call.

A quick answer first, because it comes up whenever couples mention the films. Claire and Owen never marry on screen. By Jurassic World Dominion they are together and raising Maisie Lockwood, and Bryce Dallas Howard has described them simply as a couple who are now parents.

There is no franchise wedding to copy, which makes things easier. You are borrowing the mood of the films rather than a scene from them.

The gate was a real build, and then it was gone

The original gates were built on location in the middle of Kauai, at the base of Mount Wai'ale'ale. After filming they came down. Two tall poles still stand either side of the path, and getting there means a long hike or an off-road trip along Kuamo'o Road from Wailua, according to the location record for the 1993 film.

I assumed some of the set had survived. It hadn't, and that changed how I think about the request. The gate couples describe to me mostly exists now as a memory of the film, which is exactly the kind of thing an opener can rebuild at full size.

One thing to be clear about. The Jurassic World piece in my intro catalogue takes a different route from the gate. Amber light passes through a velociraptor skeleton while the logo assembles out of a DNA double helix. I would rather say that up front than let a couple picture torches and timber doors and then get bones and amber. Both belong to the franchise. If the gate specifically is what you want, that is a custom conversation, and I'd have it before anything else is planned.

Whatever you think of the franchise, a gate is good film grammar. It fills the frame before it opens, it tells the audience a threshold is coming and it gives the edit a natural hard cut on the other side. A wedding film can use the same move with no dinosaurs at all: frame the venue doors from behind the couple, hold, then open them. I'd use that even at weddings where nobody wants the franchise.

1. Before the processional footage

This is my favourite use, and the one I'd push most couples toward. The opener runs before the first shot of the venue, then the edit cuts into the real place. It earns its size because nobody has seen the aisle yet. The park becomes a doorway into the day.

It suits a longer wedding film that has time for a deliberate opening. Let the logo finish forming, let the music land, then cut on the strongest wide shot of the venue you have. A beach or a forest ridge looks bigger after that, though nothing about the place has changed.

It also works best when the couple has an actual history with the films. Maybe they watched them together on early dates, or picked a tropical venue that already looks the part. That history gives the reference somewhere to land. I made the same argument about Marvel openers in my Marvel wedding video plan, where the franchise image only works because it belongs to the couple.

When not to: if the film is meant to feel like a quiet documentary from the first frame. When the best material is a parent doing up a dress or a hand shaking at the ceremony door, a dinosaur-sized reveal drags the mood somewhere else before those moments get a chance.

2. The reception entrance

The obvious one for the room itself. Guests are seated, the lights drop and the couple walks in after the opener has set the scale. It needs a big venue, a wide screen and space for the real entrance to follow.

Order matters here. Opener first, hold the last logo frame for a beat, then open the doors. The screen supplies the impossible park and the doors bring everyone back to the wedding.

Music is the easy thing to get wrong. If you want Jurassic Park music at the wedding, use the main theme, which John Williams brings in at the Brachiosaurus reveal, or the fanfare that plays as the helicopter comes in to the island. Leave the danger cues alone, however good the drums are. An entrance should feel like awe, and if the room sounds like it is about to be chased through a forest, the guests will react to that instead of to the couple.

When not to: a small screen behind the bar, or a couple whose walk-in is already the loudest moment of the night. The animation then competes with the people it is meant to introduce.

3. A save-the-date teaser

Short and selective. The reveal, one good image of the two of you, then the date and place. That is the whole film.

The same restraint helps the rest of the theming. The Knot's guide to wedding themes quotes planner David Tutera saying that an enchanted forest theme "doesn't mean all of your servers need to don fairy wings" (The Knot on choosing a wedding theme). I'd apply that to dinosaurs. One lit amber display or a gate-shaped arch at the entrance can carry it. Fossils on every table turn a formal wedding into a children's party.

When not to: if the reference is so private that the card needs a paragraph to explain it.

4. The start of the highlight film

This is where the catalogue version fits best, and it is the one I've thought about most. A highlight reel moves quickly, so the amber light, the skeleton and the helix can establish the franchise in a few seconds before the first emotional beat. It reads as Jurassic World without pretending the couple walked through the original gates.

The interesting part is the cut out of it. Amber light can match to sun coming through a veil. The curve of the helix can match to a road winding up to the venue. The raptor's claw can give way to the couple's hands and the rings. I think match cuts like these decide whether an opener feels like part of the film or like an advert someone pasted on top, and they cost the editor almost nothing once the footage is in.

Colour is the other half. The catalogue piece lives in amber and bone, warm and a little dusty, and most wedding footage is graded brighter and cleaner than that. If the first real shot after the logo is a crisp, cool aisle, the jump is jarring. I'd want the first ten seconds of footage to lean warm, golden-hour material if there is any, so the grade eases out of the animation instead of snapping. On a big screen the snap is obvious.

For names, a custom Jurassic World intro can carry the couple's names or a short line before the footage starts. Keep the wording short. These sequences are built around a name and a few words, and a full sentence fights the animation for the viewer's eye.

When not to: if the highlight film opens on a private vow or a parent's voiceover. When the first spoken line is the reason everyone is watching, a big animated reveal in front of it takes away some of its weight.

5. A screening during the reception

Some weddings build a screening into the evening: a same-day edit, an engagement film, the finished highlight after dinner. This is where the full-size reveal feels most at home, because by then the guests have spent hours inside the real wedding and are ready for a change of scale. They already know whose story it is.

A screening also solves the sound problem. At an entrance the opener fights the PA and the noise of people finding their seats. At a screening the room has already agreed to be quiet and watch, so the low end carries, the music can build and the reveal lands the way it was cut.

There is a location version of this too. Kualoa Ranch on Oahu, where the Gallimimus stampede in Jurassic Park was filmed, runs film-site tours and hosts weddings. Its official wedding page puts the ceremony site, Paliku Gardens, at the foot of Kanehoalani with views over Kane'ohe Bay and Mokoli'i Island. A couple marrying there has a far better reason to open big than a couple in a hotel ballroom, and a screening in that setting would probably feel less like a gimmick than almost anywhere else.

When not to: no proper screen, or a room expecting a gentle slideshow of family photos. The reveal needs a few seconds of quiet, which is hard to find while dinner service, speeches and the DJ are all working the same room.

If I had to pick one

For a couple I knew nothing about, I'd choose the opening before the processional footage. It doesn't depend on the venue having a screen, and it gives the editor the whole film to pay off the scale it sets up.

Nobody is getting married under the real gates anyway. Apart from two poles in a Kauai forest, they no longer exist.