The Wedding Film
Planning Guide.

Do you actually need a wedding film?

Honestly? Not everyone does. If you'd rather rewatch the photos and skip past video, save the money. But if any of these sound like you — hire a videographer:

• You cry at every commercial.
• Your dad's toast is going to destroy the room and you want to hear it again at 4am, 5 years from now.
• You and your partner have a song. You're going to cry when you dance to it. We promise.
• You have grandparents whose voices you want to keep forever.
• You're throwing a party and the dance floor is gonna be unreal.

How to pick the right videographer.

The single most important thing — way more than gear, package size, or even price — is style fit. Wedding film styles are wildly different. You're either getting a film that feels like a Vogue editorial, or one that feels like an afternoon with friends, or one that feels like a real-estate listing.

Watch their work. Watch 3 full highlight films from any vendor you're considering. Ask yourself: "Could this be us?" If yes, you're in the right zip code. Trust that gut feel.

A good videographer will answer all 8 cleanly and confidently. A great one will teach you something while answering them.

The timeline — when to book, and what's next.

Most "fun, real-feeling" videographers book up 9–12 months in advance, especially for May–June and September–October weddings. We cap at around 24 weddings per shooter — because each couple deserves real attention.

Pro tip: popular dates are gone fast. If you're looking at a Saturday in June or October, we recommend booking 12+ months out.

Music: the most-misunderstood part of wedding film.

Real talk: most studios will tell you you can't legally use Top 40 music in your wedding video — and most of the time, they're right. The big stuff is aggressively protected by labels, and using it without a license puts the studio (and you) at risk of takedowns, fines, or your film getting muted on social.

The good news: there's a whole world of licensing platforms designed to make this work — Musicbed, Fyrfly, Lickd — that license cinema-grade scores, and sometimes even Top 40 tracks when the rights are available. They sound expensive. They are.

What this means for you: you've got two roads.

• Let us pick. Tell us the feeling — "I want it to feel like the trailer for a Greta Gerwig movie" — and we'll match a licensed track from our curated catalogue.
• Pick your own. Pop into musicbed.com, fyrfly.com, or lickd.io, find the song that lives rent-free in your head, send us the link.

Either way: legal, licensed, your film stays up forever.

What 312 weddings have taught us.

A few things we wish we'd told our first 50 couples:

• Buffer time is a love language. Build in 30 extra minutes between the ceremony and reception. Your photographer will thank you. Your guests will thank you. Your future self will thank you.
• First looks are wildly underrated. They steal nothing from the aisle moment. They give you 20 minutes of just-the-two-of-you that you'll never have again.
• Eat your dinner. Couples who skip the seated meal regret it. Even if you take 15 minutes — eat. We'll wait.
• Nobody remembers what you spent on flowers. But they'll remember the dance floor. Always.
• Hire someone you actually like. You're spending 10 hours together on the most emotional day of your life. Vibes matter.