Marriage Media Rundown
High quality, professional wedding video is almost always a massive investment. Definitely one worth making, mind you, but that doesn’t change the fact that a lot of couples either don’t see the value in a full-on wedding film, or don’t want to allocate enough budget to pull one off. If you haven’t considered it, definitely peruse the “wedding” tag to understand the implications that a marriage film will have… for your marriage (woah).
That said, there are alternatives, combinations, and offerings of all kinds when it comes to wedding media. Here’s a brief overview of it all.
| Media Type | Photography | Content Creation | Wedding Videography | Marriage Film |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Basic Description | still photos | assorted video clips | A collection of edited videos | video collection that focuses on your relationship instead of the wedding |
| Purpose | “get a permanent record of the day” | “create short clips for social media” | “get a permanent record of the day that moves” | “capture the current state of your relationship at the time of your marriage” |
| Price Range | $0 - 15k | $250 - 5k | $500 - 30k | $4k - ??? |
| What the Low End Looks Like | Your photographer friend who you convinced to work for free, gets basic shots of middling quality, and probably misses some key moments | 100s spent on a friend running around with a phone, gets a smattering of semi-serviceable tik-toks | high 100s spent on a guy shooting handheld (shaky footage) with a single camera, definitely missing key moments (you need multiple cameras to capture a full wedding service for video properly). They’ll ideally also record reception speeches and toasts, but audio is hard and takes forethought, so they’ll probably botch it, and so the toasts will sound like someone farting into a landline | 2k-ish spent on 1-2 camera operators, 1 of which will spend a second day interviewing you about your relationship for the video, and getting quality audio all throughout |
| What the High End Looks Like | 10k+ spent on a professional photographer with a very specific style and niche that you vibe with, and who will likely bring on at least one extra photographer | 5k-ish spent on a someone (likely a former videographer) who’s specialized their camera equipment (read: not iPhone) and edit pipline to quickly create very high-quality, attention grabbing social media posts, and will manage all of your social media needs for the wedding | 10-50k spent on a team of professional videographers, who will all have cameras and likely some narrative-film experience, and will cover all angles for the entire day, get random interviews throughout the day, and possibly set up set pieces to get unique shots | Unsure, cause this is my idea and no one’s thrown 100k at it yet, but I could see this style turning into a 20-80k multi-day shoot, with a full film crew, cinematic interviews of bride, groom, friends, relatives, a full geneology rundown GoT-style, and then full high-end videography service, shot with Hollywood-tier cameras (and camera crews), with all the stops pulled out |
Prioritization
That’s a lot of info, what is there to gain from it? Well for you, a much better understanding of your priorities, and whether or not they’re good ones. There’s a lot of things listed there that don’t actually make sense.
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Photography is basically a given, always, and generally worth spending at least some money on. You want a record of the day, a record of you in the dress, a record of your parents, grandparents, and anyone else who might not be around to see your future children.
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Low and medium tier videography (say sub-7k) is almost never worth it. For one, videography is really just photography with moving images. They’re not interviewing you, they’re not exploring your relationship, they’re not using the artistic medium of film anywhere close to its full potential, and you’re missing out because of it (but still paying 1000s). But then in addition to that, the quality is going to be worse than what you’d get by comparison because video is much more demanding that photography. So if you take your video budget and put it into a better photographer, you’ll get much nicer photos (and you can always recruit a couple guests with phones to get some shots).
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Content Creation might have a place, but it should never be a priority. If you’re dumping most of your media budget into social media, that’s a bad sign. This is media that is going to commemorate a singular event that will (hopefully) only ever happen once in your life. It really shouldn’t matter how many likes you get. Got family who won’t be attending and need photos? Google drive. Easy.
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High end videography is where it’s at if you’re rich. A small but skilled videographer team can make some really nice videos, and these groups will often also do spot interviews of guests, the bridal party, etc.. In addition, some of the fx shots that these teams can get are absurdly good. Just from a cinephile standpoint, you have to respect it.
And then there’s what we do. I’m calling it “Marriage Films” because while it does have a videography aspect, it’s really a type of short film collection, with much more substance, done as a type of documentary filmmaking, with the quality of narrative productions. It’s like videography, but better, and it’s doable (although only in a limited way) for about 2k… currently.
What It Means
To be honest, I’m of the opinion that other than photography, none of this is essential… buuuuuuuut, if you’re gonna get something else, then a marriage film collection is the best bang for your buck. Content creators foment vainity, videographers only make sense if you’re loaded, getting a good marriage film is like the next most important thing.
Final Thought: Combinations
Often times photographers will offer video, or videographers will offer photography. We do that, but we do that by outsourcing (we’ll bring on a photographer who we know is good).
As a general rule, people are mortal, and their capacities are limited. If you contract someone to do photo and video, or photo and content creation, you should expect fewer photos and video/content than if you’d contracted those roles individually.
In addition, just because a particular vendor offers multiple services doesn’t mean they’re good at all of them. Differences in camera technology, experience, audio equipment, and style often cause problems when trying to fill multiple roles. Definitely watch their content to get a feel for where they’re strong, and make your decision with that in mind.