How to price wedding videography packages

Why wedding video gets under-priced

Most pricing advice starts in the wrong place: a number somebody else charges. Borrow it and you inherit everything behind it you cannot see - their edit style, their volume, their overhead.

Video gets under-priced for a specific reason: the visible part of the job is the smallest part. The couple watches you work for eight or ten hours, so that is what the price feels like it should cover. But your post is multicam, with audio to sync and level, color to match across bodies, and a story to write before a single cut lands. The day is raw material. The film is the product, and it gets made on weekday evenings in November.

The fix is unglamorous and it works. Count the hours, add up what the year costs, divide by the weddings you can actually deliver. That gives you a floor.

Step one: count your real hours

Take a wedding you have already delivered and account for every hour, from the first inquiry email to the moment the footage went to archive. The example below is one videographer, an eight-hour day, a highlight film plus a full ceremony edit. The hours are illustrative, not a standard.

Sixty hours, and the shoot day is eight of them - a bit over one hour in eight. Quote a day rate and you are pricing an eighth of the job. When a couple says the price seems high for a day of filming, they are right, and they have no idea the other fifty-two hours exist.

Two sets of hours get missed: the work outside any single wedding, like the inquiries that never booked, which the weddings that did book have to pay for; and the work hiding in the cracks, like the export that failed at ninety percent.

Step two: your cost of doing business

Cost of doing business is a plain question: what does a year of running this business cost before any profit? Write an annual figure against each of these, using your own numbers.

• Gear replacement and depreciation. Not what you spent this year, but what it costs annually to keep a working kit alive: the replacement cost of each item divided by the years it realistically lasts. Gear dies mid-season.
• Insurance. The liability cover venues ask for, plus equipment cover.
• Software subscriptions. Editing and color, plugins, music licensing, cloud delivery, website, and whatever runs your bookings. Small monthly numbers add up to a line that surprises people once a year.
• Storage and archive. Working drives, backups, the offsite copy, and the archive tier holding delivered weddings for as long as you promised.
• Travel and vehicle. Fuel, parking, servicing, and the share of a car that exists because of this work.
• Tax and contributions. Set aside as a cost rather than discovered as a bill. Ask your accountant for your real rate.
• Marketing and business services. Advertising, listings, your accountant, payment processing fees, education.
• Sick days and unpaid weeks. Nobody pays you when the season stops or when you get the flu. Decide how many weeks a year you are not earning, and let the earning weeks carry them.
• The salary you intend to pay yourself. The line most people leave out, and the most important one. Decide what you need to live on before you price anything, and treat it as a cost like any other. Profit is what remains after the business pays you.

Step three: turn it into a floor price

Now put the halves together. The figures below are illustrative, chosen only so the arithmetic is visible. They are not a recommendation and not a market rate - swap in your own and the method still works.

The weddings line is the one people get wrong. It is not how many dates are free, it is how many you can deliver at your standard without the edit queue eating the next booking. A season you cannot deliver is worse than one you did not book.

What comes out is a floor, not a price. Below it, the wedding costs you money to shoot. Your price sits above it, and the gap is where profit and surviving a slow year live. If the floor lands higher than you think couples near you will pay, there are three honest responses: raise the price and market to people who pay it, simplify what you deliver so it takes fewer hours, or take fewer weddings at a higher price. Working below your floor is not one of them.

Package structure that works

With a floor in hand, packages are about making the choice easy. Three options holds up: a clear entry, one obvious middle, an ambitious top. Seven options is a decision the couple postpones.

The entry package

A real product you are happy to put your name on, not a stripped shell built to be rejected. Shorter coverage, one film, one shooter. It exists so a couple who cannot reach your middle price still pays you above your floor.

The middle package

The one you want to sell, so build it deliberately. Put in the deliverables you most want to make, the coverage length that produces your best work, and the add-on that quietly makes your day easier. Price the entry so the step up feels small next to what it adds, and make the middle the package your site and your reply email describe by default.

The top package

Ambitious on purpose: the wedding you would love to shoot. Two days, extra shooters, a feature-length edit, a same-day teaser. It sells occasionally, and the rest of the time it sets the ceiling and makes the middle read as sensible rather than expensive. Make it genuinely better, though - a top package that is the middle with a drone bolted on is transparent.

Name packages by what they deliver

Not by metal or tier. Coverage hours, which films, approximate lengths, number of shooters, delivery window. Every vague word is a disagreement you have agreed to have later.

What to charge for separately

Anything that costs you real extra work, or that can be cancelled by something outside your control, belongs outside the base price.

• Drone, as a conditional add-on. Weather, airspace, venue policy, and licensing can each ground it on the morning. Sell it as its own line with the conditions written down, so a grounded drone is a disappointment rather than a refund.
• Raw footage. Decide the policy once and put it in the contract. If you sell it, price it as a product, with a stated format and a caveat that it is ungraded and as shot.
• Extra hours. Publish an overtime rate at booking. Agreed in advance, a reception running long becomes a one-line text instead of a negotiation.
• Second shooter. Their day rate, your time briefing them, and the extra edit hours their footage creates. A second camera adds work in post, not just on the day.
• Rush delivery. It costs every other couple their place in the queue, so charge properly and cap how many you take.
• Travel beyond a stated radius. Publish the radius included, then quote mileage, flights, and accommodation per event.
• Extra edits and keepsakes. Social cuts, a teaser, an anniversary re-edit, a drive or album. Each is separate work, and each sells best after delivery, when they have just watched their film.

The two package mistakes that cost real money

Unlimited revisions

It sounds like service and it is an open-ended labor commitment you priced at zero. It also produces worse films, because a couple with unlimited attempts edits by committee instead of reacting to a finished piece. Include a defined number of rounds, and define a round as one set of consolidated notes sent within a stated window, covering music, pacing, and swapping shots. Restructuring the story is a re-edit, and it has its own price, stated in the contract at booking.

Undefined deliverables

If your package says the film, you and the couple are picturing two different products. A highlight film and a full documentary edit are wildly different amounts of work, and the gap is where unpaid weeks come from. Name each deliverable, give an approximate length, and state the delivery window. The wedding videography workflow guide covers the delivery side. Pricing and delivery are the same conversation held at two different times.

How to raise prices without losing the season

If the arithmetic just told you that you have been under your floor, the instinct is to double the price on Monday. Do it in a way that survives a real season.

• New inquiries only, from a stated date. Every signed booking is honored at the price agreed. Nobody who has paid a retainer should hear about a change.
• Move in steps, each season. Regular, moderate increases are easier to hold your nerve on than one leap, and they let you read the effect before the next one.
• Change the package at the same time. Add a deliverable, extend the coverage, improve the handover, so the higher number attaches to something visible.
• Raise the entry package first. It is the floor of the whole structure, and lifting it stops the cheapest option from quietly setting your income.
• Judge the season, not the inquiry. Some couples will say no, and some would have anyway. What matters is booked revenue across the season.
• Answer everyone the same way. Discounting case by case teaches you that your price is negotiable, and it is unfair to the couple who paid it. Point a tight budget at the shorter package instead.

Quoting photo and video together

When you work alongside a photographer, couples will ask for one price. Give them one document with two line items inside it. The work is separate, the hours are different, and if one of you becomes unavailable the couple should see what they are still buying.

• Decide who holds the contract. Either you both contract the couple directly, or one leads and the other is a subcontractor at an agreed rate. Both work. Working it out after a refund request does not.
• Price video on video hours. The post hours are not comparable, so do not let the photography half set the combined number. Run your own floor calculation.
• Make any combined saving real. Booking together does save you something - one planning call, shared travel. Size the discount to that, not to a round number that feels generous.
• Agree the day split before you quote. Who leads formals, who directs the couple session, how long each of you needs.

Keep the numbers where the dates are

Pricing stops being theoretical the moment the season starts. The floor you worked out in January is only useful if it is in front of you when a couple emails in June. Redo the hours count once a year against a wedding you actually delivered, revisit the cost of doing business when the gear changes, and keep quotes and invoices attached to the dates they belong to rather than scattered across a folder, an inbox, and a spreadsheet.

Common questions