BEHIND THE SCENES: Adam Levine Was Pretty Stressed Out About Crashing Weddings
So many things could've gone wrong, despite the elaborate planning. But Maroon 5 pulled it off and now, every bride in the world really wants Adam Levine to unexpectedly appear and sing at her wedding.
By Samantha Khor — 16 Jan 2015, 10:59 AM — Updated almost 10 years ago
Wedding crashers do not usually receive warm welcomes in wedding receptions. But that's not the case for Maroon 5, who surprised a number of real-life brides and grooms for their latest music video, "Sugar"!
The band walks into a series of venues, seemingly unnoticed, and sets up their performance equipment behind a curtain on stage. The curtain drops, and we see a shocked bride and groom attempting to process the fact that MAROON 5 IS PLAYING AT THEIR WEDDING!!!
Inspired by the 2005 hit movie 'Wedding Crashers', Adam Levine and co. embarked on a journey through Los Angeles to crash and surprise as many wedding parties as they possibly can
The video, directed by Wedding Crashers helmer David Dobkin, was filmed over a full three-day weekend in Los Angeles at venues from Glendale to Marina del Rey and everywhere in between, with the band putting in 10-12 hours of work and travel each day.
The Inside Man: Director David Dobkin initially thought that no one should know about the wedding crashes and filming, before deciding that they should at least have one "inside guy" in each location - the groom
In an interview with VH1, Dobkin said, "It was pretty intense. I was like, nobody can know, but then I realized, one person is going to have to know. I didn’t want the brides to know so we talked to the grooms."
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However, the grooms were kept in the dark about the band that was going to appear in their wedding. Some begun to get wary and were about to pull out until Dobkin met with them personally to explain things.
"Until the week before, the groom didn’t even know who the band was. We said, this is a Grammy award winning top 10 band," Dobkin said.
"A bunch of the grooms were nervous and about to pull out so I went and met with them personally. At that point I did reveal who it was and we lucked out. They were all Maroon 5 fans, and also fans of Adam from The Voice."
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The Big Reveal: Elaborate planning was essential, from designing the curtain drop to working out the details with wedding planners and locations, as the "moment of recognition" was the "juice" that fuels the feel-good video
"I need them to be behind a curtain and the curtain drops and it reveals them. I had to design and build this thing that was like a pop-up tent and then you could press a button and the curtain drops. It sounds simple but it took us the better part of a month to figure it out," Dobkin explained.
"Then I got to all the wedding planners around L.A. and had to go to all the venues to see how we could infiltrate them without anyone knowing. There was only going to be a 20-minute window for us to sneak in, pop up the tent, and get the band in without anyone noticing them. I had 6 cameras set up and dressed as if they were in the wedding. You really only have one shot at this. It ended up being 7 or 8 weddings, all in one day, some day, some night."
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If you're wondering if the crew had to assemble and dismantle a stage for the band at every single location, they didn't. They only had to make simple changes to existing set-ups to accommodate the curtain drop.
"They had stages set up for their actual wedding band already. All we did was some simple continuity changes to match each one as best we could," a representative for Maroon 5 told Entertainment Tonight.
cnn.comThe rep also notes that certain shots (like Levine's solo performance) "had to be shot separately from the real weddings due to time and space constraints that were given."
Filming Concerns: A week before filming, Levine was concerned that their "surprise" may backfire and "ruin the bride's moment".
"A week before, I went to see the band rehearse the song and Adam was like, “What if people don’t like us? What happens if we ruin the bride’s moment?” For the first time we thought, what if we’re ruining someone’s most special day?" Dobkin mused.
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To prepare for that possibility, Levine came up with an idea to perform an acoustic version of "She Will Be Loved" for the couple's first dance
"Adam had just gotten married and he had this instinctual idea that was really sweet. He said “You know what? After we do the song, me and James (Valentine, Maroon 5 guitarist) will perform an acoustic version of “She Will Be Loved” just for the bride and groom and clear the floor and it can be like their first dance.” And I was like, that’s awesome. It’s just sick romantic," Dobkin revealed.
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Operation Wedding Crashers Is A-Go: With the plans ironed out, it's time for the band and film crew to execute the project. But as any filmmaker would know, Murphy's Law has to strike some way or other.
"At the first wedding, we knew there was this small window of time we could slip in unnoticed. It was a Jewish wedding and the bride and groom are up on the chairs and I get this call over the radio “The band’s stuck in the elevator.” They somehow got out but then the elevator didn’t work so the band had to run up 9 floors," Dobkin revealed.
"When Adam got to the top of the stairs he said he was out of breath and couldn’t sing and I said “Dude, you have to.” But he did and he was great."
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Luckily, the rest of the filming process went off pretty smoothly with "overwhelming reactions" from the couples and guests, which Levine described as "an out of body experience"
"I had no idea I would be affected by the overwhelming reactions we received from the couples and guests. Being able to create an unforgettable experience for several people was the highlight of it all," Levine told People Magazine in a press release.
cnn.comLevine told ET's Kevin Frazier that it was "stressful to arrange all of it" but the brides and grooms were certainly shocked that the band had crashed their weddings. "It was a lot of fun. It felt good to kind of surprise these people and make them happy," the Maroon 5 frontman said. "Happy that they liked our band too. It would have been a total disaster [if not]."
Was It Real Or Staged? While we are not sure if footages from the video are actually from real-life weddings, the band made the headlines when they crashed this couple's wedding in December last year
"It was an incredible surprise and everyone at the wedding is going to cherish those memories," a rep for Duke Photography, which photographed the wedding, has said.
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Whether the wedding crashes are staged or authentic, it's still a pretty heartwarming video to watch over and over again. Watch it HERE:
We feel this chef so much. Our faces would be like that too if Maroon 5 walked past us.
