We’ve all heard horror stories of this– a videographer or a photographer asking couples to do something strange and unnatural, pulling them away from their most precious moments to do something the artist hopes will look good on their Instagram, asking them to do something twice “for the camera”, and generally approaching their privileged role on their client’s wedding day with an agenda & an ego (despite their duty to serve and advocate).

Transparently, this happens. And our goal for you and couples everywhere is to not experience this. We cannot stress enough the importance of finding a team that you connect and feel comfortable with, who curiously inquires about your hopes for your day & the documentation of it, and is committed not just to honoring your vision but advocating for your experience.

There is a spectrum of wedding filmmaking styles ranging from documentary (an unobtrusive, fly on the wall approach) to more cinematic and produced (requiring more direction and collaboration to achieve certain shots), and it’s important to find out which one connects more with you as you look into different teams. There are many filmmakers on each side of this spectrum and more that are somewhere in the middle. You can usually learn a good bit by watching their films (and paying attention to how many of their shots look posed and directed versus natural and unprompted) as well as asking them how they direct on a wedding day and work with alongside a photographer.

The right filmmaker team should blend into the natural fabric of your day & team, concern themselves with what is important to you (both in terms of what you want in your film as well as how you hope to feel and experience the day), and allow you the space to be present & enjoy the moments you’re in.

Type in “wedding film” on Youtube and we are sure it won’t take long to find a few with slow motion kissing close-ups no one wanted to see & long sweeping shots of a cake topper to music that probably plays at your dentist’s office. We hate to say it but it’s true.

We want you to know that there are alternative options. In fact, as much diversity as there is in wedding styles (from rustic boho to black tie and everything in between) there is a similar spectrum of filmmakers approaching their work with a unique style & voice.

If you want something chic and upbeat & edited like a trendy music video, you can find it as easily as something more raw and natural like the wedding scenes in The Godfather (a favorite around here). We encourage you to pay attention to the styles you connect with, reach out to those teams & ask for recommendations from people and vendors you trust!

We get it. Imagining yourself being filmed and then ~watching~ that film can feel vulnerable. At a minimum, it’s a foreign concept to most people who aren’t models and actors, but there’s a reason why we’ve chosen to document (real) weddings rather than work on a production set.

At the bottom of it, we love filming weddings because we believe that documenting the beauty and meaning in your life matters. To celebrate what it is to be human, to reflect on what is most meaningful, to share with open hearts what we feel and see in each other, to celebrate the imperfect and unplanned as well as the moments you’ve dreamt of for years, to choose love and gratitude and togetherness despite the ease of the alternative– these are all acts of rebellion of the very best kind, and the kinds of stories we believe are most worth telling.

Our approach to wedding filmmaking is antithetical to an industry commonly perceived for being vane and materialistic. Regardless of how beautiful you & your event look, our cameras are not biased towards your immaculate place settings. You can be certain that what our hearts and cameras are centered on during your most tender moments is not “how can I make this look epic?”. Instead we ask, “what will mean the most to those in this film?”, “what will they want to see most in 40 years?”, “whose voices will they want to hear?”, and "who are they– to themselves, to each other, and to those who mean the most to them?”.

And these questions are for everybody. Good storytellers seek to honor your truth, detectives of what makes you “you”. So whether you are quiet and soulful or the life of the party or somewhere in the middle, you deserve a team that will lean into all you generously entrust to them & honor it all in a way that reflects you and what you cherish most.

We guarantee this will not only create a film that looks as good as it felt, but more importantly will connect with your heart & all those who see it.

We first want to specify here that we adore our photographer friends and respect the hell out of the work they do. They are an irreplaceable and important part of your day and are worth every penny of what they charge.

So, please hear us when we say we mean absolutely no shade when we share that our work is objectively more expensive in both hard costs, time and labor. This does not mean that we believe our role to be more valuable – we understand that each of our roles require a unique set of skills and responsibilities that are not quantifiable, and we also do not believe that a value of a service comes down to mere expenditure. However, we’d be doing ourselves and our cinematographer peers a disservice to shy away from one important & objective truth: Our gear is easily double, triple, or quadruple the cost of photography equipment and we spend double, triple, or quadruple the amount of time in post-production.

We often work with photographers who walk into wedding days with a single backpack and a camera around their neck, while we have a four-wheeled rolling cart containing multiple hard pelican cases (one for cameras and lenses, one for our audio equipment, one for our reception lighting – aka the video alternative to flash on a photography camera, along with our drone, tripods, light stands (and sand bags for the lightstands), a bag of accessories like batteries & cables, and two additional cinema cameras we hand-carry. And these are just gear expenses– when you factor in the added cost of storage (one wedding film requires about 10x as much storage space as a wedding gallery), music licensing, drone insurance, equipment cleanings & services, etc– you can imagine how many extra hidden costs there are for cinematographers.

For the gear/equipment reason alone, we have (personally) found it impossible to successfully operate as a single-person team. While one of us is moving gear from ceremony to reception, one of us is capturing cocktail hour and celebratory moments with your family. While one of us is setting up audio for ceremony or toasts at the DJ booth, one of us is capturing the details that you, your planner and your florist worked so hard to bring to life. In all of the other moments, we are committed to capturing two perspectives of every fleeting moment worth preserving.

Because our work as wedding cinematographers requires two of us in very specialized roles (i.e. drone pilot, audio technician and editor to name a few), we also have much more expensive and limited options when it comes to outsourcing (i.e. to second shooters or editors, not to mention a lack of AI options to speed up the post-production process like those available to photographers). When it comes to post-production, we asked photographers over the years how much time (on average) it takes them to edit a wedding gallery, and many of them shared they can edit a full gallery in less than a quarter of the time it takes us to complete a wedding film. For teams that prefer to outsource some or all of their post-production process, the average cost to edit a wedding photo gallery is $150-200 (or less with AI), versus $1,000 for a wedding film (less for something more straightforward like moving pictures to music, more for edits that are more story-driven and textured with audio).

In 2020, after years of struggling to run our business with inconsistent assistants (and therefore an inconsistent experience and product) we happily decided that the best thing for both our business and our clients is a commitment from both of us as full-time career cinematographers - improving our quality of service and product, but also increasing the need to price our services higher to provide for our family as our primary income source.

We will close this by saying that our industry is always changing and we expect it to continue to do so – from social media to AI to music licensing laws, we must stay adaptable and quick on our feet. We are so grateful to create in a time where and film is more relevant and valued than it has ever been before, and we are committed to doing our part in pushing our industry forward in creativity, technical excellence and heart.

Contrary to popular belief, vendors are not charging more for wedding services just because it is a wedding. Weddings are complex events that demand higher expectations, a more niche expertise, and involve a far greater emotional investment than other kinds of jobs or special events. There is an expectation for your vendors to nail it once (there are no do-overs for this day), and to work both completely independently as well as cooperatively with the rest of your vendor team, offering a harmonious experience that (we hope) you will hardly notice. Your wedding is a day that will be imprinted in your memory for the rest of your life, and therefore demands higher expectations from those you invite to share in it with you.

Weddings are also unique in the sense that vendors must commit to jobs 9-18 months in advance (usually on a weekend) while turning away any other opportunities for those dates (personal or professional). When we say “yes” to a couple’s wedding day, there are many “no’s” that follow. After nine years in business, we have a protected and limited availability to ensure our “yes” is a carefully considered one – reserved for opportunities we feel we are both well aligned for and able to give the best of our time, heart and attention to.

The work days themselves are also unique in the sense that vendors (specifically cinematographers and photographers) are often on their feet for 8-12+ hours with no breaks (sometimes without the ability to use the restroom or eat), carrying heavy equipment, surrounded by a large number of people in unpredictable conditions, and capturing once-in-a-lifetime moments that cannot be recreated.

It’s not just about capturing great imagery – it’s about anticipating & knowing how to do this in an incredibly ever-changing and unpredictable environment, in a way that is unobtrusive & respectful of those you are sharing the space with (namely the couple and the team they’ve hired to document alongside you), and considerate of the emotional impact of the moment at hand. This is not a production set – this is a wedding day, and should be treated with a special level of care and consideration not required in other types of jobs or events.

The end result should be beautiful, well-lit, and honoring imagery of the people in it without compromising the emotional tone of the moment and those you shared it with. Seasoned wedding industry cinematographers and photographers are trained in this unique art.

These are honestly great options to consider if hiring a professional wedding filmmaker is not a priority for you. However, you definitely won’t receive the same end result and we’d love to speak to why!

First and foremost, while there are many costs that go into a wedding film package (that we speak to transparently below!) the greatest value within a wedding film investment is in the final edited product (the ~10 minute highlight film you receive). This film is not only the product of the long day of filming we share together– but over 80 hours of full-time editing behind the computer, months of prep-work to learn who you are and what’s important to you, years of experience and investment (in gear, education, etc), and countless business & legal costs to ensure we do this well & safely for all involved. Arguably most importantly, this does not account for the endless & unquantifiable internal work necessary to see and tell your story with care, love, respect, mutual collaboration and discernment.

This part of the process– the most valuable and critical of the creative journey for us– is not something content creators embark on. They will load your camera roll with clips of your special moments and make some quick edited reels for social media (which is amazing!), but the story building – the weaving and piecing together of themes, emotions and narratives – is absent from their workflow & offerings.

Content creators (and those with a camcorder) are also not typically trained in capturing audio, dramatically reducing the playback quality of your vows and toasts or at worse rendering them useless (depending on the audio conditions of the space, mic/speaker setup, etc). They are also much more limited in lighting & lens versatility, and more importantly the orientation of their footage. Because your footage will be shot in vertical orientation (contrary to the horizontal orientation of standard televisions and computers for playback), there are concerns for the timelessness and ease of access to watch this footage in the future. If you are hiring a content creator to showcase the footage of your day in motion for social media sharing, this will absolutely suffice– but if you are looking for a more timeless and quality portrait of your love story, we recommend allocating your budget to someone who is equipped in the multifaceted art of filmmaking.