r/weddingvideography

Shoot a wedding, feel great… then open the footage and suddenly it’s your whole week gone 😅
Sorting clips, syncing audio, pacing the story, fixing little things—it adds up fast, especially during busy season.
Just wondering if others feel this too, or if you’ve found ways to make post-production less overwhelming ? If you are still struggling let’s connect!!

I’m doing more wedding videography and need good and reliable audio, but don’t want to spend too too much. I have one TASCAM DR-10L pro. I want to be able to provide full ceremony, dances and speeches so what would be good for capturing the audio for speeches and ceremony?

Hey everyone,

Been working on a few wedding edits recently, and one thing that really stood out is how much time goes into just cleaning up footage before the “real” storytelling even begins.

Things like:

• going through hours of footage to build a usable first cut
• removing dead air, awkward pauses, repeated lines
• tightening dialogue so it actually flows naturally
• structuring vows/speeches into something emotionally coherent

I’m curious — how are you guys handling this part of the process?

Do you:

• handle everything yourself end-to-end?
• have a system/template for faster rough cuts?
• or break it into stages (assembly → cleanup → story)?

Lately I’ve been helping a couple of filmmakers specifically with this “first pass” stage — basically taking raw footage to a clean, structured rough cut so they can jump straight into creative decisions. It made me realize how much time this stage alone eats up.

Personally, I’ve found that locking in narration (vows/speeches) early makes everything else flow way smoother, but it’s also the most time-consuming part.

Curious how others here are approaching it, especially during busy seasons.

Getting married next fall, midwest, cant figure out what a realistic number is for wedding photography. Google gives me everything from $1,500 to $12,000 and those "average cost" articles never specify the region or whats included so theyre useless. We want 8 hours, two shooters, full digital gallery. No album no prints just the files. Midwest market not a major city. What are couples paying for that in 2026 and how do you tell the difference between a $2k photographer and a $5k one?

Wedding editors, we all know the struggle. A client or lead shooter drops a massive Google Drive folder with 8 hours of raw footage from 3 different cameras. You usually have to download the entire thing, wait for zips to extract, and scrub through hours of b-roll just to find one specific moment.

I got tired of the "downloading tax" on my hard drive and my time, so I built a tool to bypass it. You paste the Drive link and search for keywords or objects (like "cake" or "kiss"). It gives you the exact timestamp in the cloud so you only download the clip you actually need.

I am looking for a few wedding editors to stress-test this on their current projects. Drop a comment if you want free access to try it out.

I have seen full fledged luxury wedding films online (ones that must have costed a lot for a full team of videographers), that have hundreds of thousands of views.

I notice some of these videos contain copyrighted music.

What is the deal with that in the end? Like they obviously didn't get permission from the record labels as that sort of license would cost hundreds of thousands, yet they've clearly profited off of using such a track.

Is it ok to do? I was under the impression it was illegal.

Reason for asking is I just shot a gorgeous luxury wedding yesterday and have a perfect track in mind that is from a movie and would love to use it, but also don't want to commit to the edit if it's just gonna get copyright striked or muted as soon as it goes up.

What are your guys' thoughts on this?

So a year ago-ish was our wedding and we paid approx 3k for this videographer duo. They were awesome the day of, they were kind, helpful and did a great job. They said about 8-12 weeks I believe until we get a video. 8-12 weeks later and nothing. My wife emails them and we still get nothing. We email them again and I believe it was about 6 months at that point and they send us a 6 minute video and the guy said he had to help his dad or something. The video was great but he said he would send us all the ceremony and reception footage. He had us mic’d up and everything but after a year still no footage that they promised. We emailed them 2-3 more times and I even messaged their insta but just no response. What should we do?

Really starting to sweat over here because inquiries are just not coming in. Like anyone else, I've traditionally gotten a lot business through referrals, but something's off this year, and I've got a family to feed man!

Things I've considered:
- boosted or paid ad on social media - I haven't tried this since the pre-covid days

- more content-y social media posts, i.e. posts featuring my actual face rather than just footage from weddings

- running a temporary 15-20% off discount? This one feels desperate...

- starting a tik-tok account (barf)

- changing up my style to this trendy Wes Anderson-lite thing that's IG keeps feeding me

If you have no suggestions but are in a similar boat, feel free to just commiserate with me!

Hi everyone! I’m getting married in November and we are prioritizing a really good photographer for the wedding. We’d also like a video recording just to have the day documented but are not too worried about quality or precision there. I was thinking of hiring someone to be there to record. I heard people suggest Columbia college students or other film students but I first wanted to ask if anyone has experience or thoughts about this?

Usually goes like this: Somebody who's getting married posts their need for a videographer into a group like "(insert state name) wedding couples and vendors". Then there's literally like 50~ comments by people with full portfolio links as them say "We'd love to shoot your wedding!"

And I'm just like: "Okay... Why even post a comment from myself there? I'm just starting out. There's 0 chance they want me over everyone else with portfolios and track record."

So what's a better approach here?

I'm already asking around word of mouth coworkers at my regular 9-5 style job, and friends and so on... Is the beginner's best luck a word of mouth style of entry into the wedding videography world?

Or is wedding videography just so saturated that it's very hard to get in?

Not talking about Aftershoot or AI editing, we all know about that stuff.

I mean actually using Claude to automate the business side of things. Proposals, client emails, workflow tools, maybe even building something with Claude Code.

I’ve gone pretty deep on it and it’s honestly changed how I run things but I rarely see anyone in this industry talking about it. Curious if anyone else has found interesting use cases or if this is just a me thing.

Also I know some people are divided about it especially in the industry but just curious.

What are you using it for?

My husband and I got married a little over 6 months ago. We had wedding photographer and videographer duo. We still have not received our wedding video… is this normal?

I’ve reached out a few times… with the first time getting no response and the second one saying at the end of April which has now passed.

I’m just extremely frustrated and feel like it’s abnormal for it to take this long with no explanation.

Is anyone doing a same day preview that the couple can see while still at the wedding? I’ve been doing a little like 45 second highlight reel of the first part of the day that I put on display during the reception and it’s been drawing a lot of interest and gotten me a surprising amount of inquiries the last few months. Basically free advertising at the wedding and great for posting the morning after for IG/TikTok content.

I'm a wedding filmmaker based in Texas looking to bring on a video editor to help with highlight films. I currently have a backlog and would love to build a long-term relationship with the right person.

What I need:

5-7 minute wedding highlight films. The Footage will already be culled and organized. I’ll provide the music selection. Your role would be to craft the story, pacing, and emotional flow

I will handle color grading and final touches, so I’ll need the project file delivered at the end. Preferably editing in Adobe Premiere Pro, but I’m open to DaVinci Resolve aswell.

I'm looking for Clean, cinematic, emotional storytelling, Strong pacing and music syncing is a must! Experience with weddings is a big plus. Send me your portfolio or sample work (wedding films preferred), Your rate per highlight film, and what software you use.

Looking forward to finding someone solid to work with long-term!

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