DOOR COUNTY, WIS. — Most wedding videos are shot from a photographer's eye level. Emily and Josh Cowles's wedding video was shot from about knee height, bouncing, occasionally out of focus, and narrated by heavy panting — because it came from a GoPro strapped to the collar of their dog, Swayze.
The Sheepadoodle wore the camera through the couple's August 22 ceremony on the Door County peninsula, and the footage that came back was less wedding film than nature documentary shot from a dog's-eye vantage point: knees, hands reaching down for pets, the occasional dropped hors d'oeuvre. The clip that made the video travel widely online wasn't scripted at all — a 20-minute, uninterrupted stretch of Swayze simply sitting with Emily's 91-year-old grandmother, who spent much of the reception with a hand resting on the dog's head.
"He is just a bright light to anybody who meets him. He's so goofy and a great snuggler. Everybody calls him a Muppet. He's just the best."
Emily Cowles
The video has since racked up millions of views and been picked up by outlets including WBAY, Good Morning America and People — a reach well beyond what the couple expected from what was meant as a keepsake. Emily has said the idea came from wanting a record of the day that wasn't just posed photographs, something closer to how it actually felt from inside it.
That instinct seems to be what carried the clip past the usual cute-wedding-dog territory and into something people kept sharing: not Swayze performing for the camera, but Swayze quietly present with an elderly relative the couple knows won't be at every future gathering.
"There's going to be a day when not all those people are going to be around...so we're going to be able to look back and it's just going to bring a smile to our face."
Emily Cowles
Strapping a GoPro to the dog has become something of a minor wedding trend in its own right, a low-tech way to produce the kind of unscripted footage that staged videography rarely catches. Swayze, for his part, appears to have taken the assignment in stride.
