Walk into any wedding fair this year and you’ll spot it: a photographer with a battered 35mm slung next to their digital body. Film’s back, and it’s not just nostalgia — couples are asking for it by name, and more of us are reaching for it too.

Part of it is how film matches the way we actually remember things — warm, a little soft at the edges. The grain, the color shifts, the odd light leak: it mirrors the fuzziness of a fond memory in a way an 8K sensor never will. Digital chases sharpness. Film leans into imperfection, and imperfection feels honest.

There’s discipline in it too. Thirty-six frames a roll instead of an endless card means every shot has to earn its place. That slows you down, makes you actually look. Couples feel that intention even when they can’t name it.

Film also captures presence over performance. It asks people to be in the moment instead of posing for it — a hand on a shoulder, a laugh caught mid-breath. In a season of AI-smoothed, over-edited photography, that unpolished honesty is exactly what couples are craving.

My partner Jack Hartzman pulled his old Hasselblad 500CM out of storage this year and started shooting medium format at weddings again. He figured couples would ask what it was. Instead, brides light up — they think it’s retro, and plenty are asking to add it to their packages outright.

We’re not ditching digital. But between the two of us, we’re bringing film to more weddings this year, shooting it alongside our usual coverage, so couples get the reliability of digital plus a handful of frames that feel pulled straight out of a memory.