So you’re planning your wedding; maybe you’ve booked your venue, your florist and maybe even your photographer. But what about a wedding videographer? A lot of the time, booking a wedding videographer is either something a couple desperately want and throw money at me, or there is a lot of fence sitting going on because they simply don’t know what to expect from one. In this blog, I wanted to write a few points about what to expect from a wedding videographer, so hopefully this blog can help those people jump off that fence! 

So what can you expect from me? 

First of all, before anything is booked, I love to either have a phone call, a zoom chat or a face to face meet (obviously pre covid!) because I think it is so important to get to know each other a little. After all, it’s me that is going to be attending your wedding doing all the work, so we’ve got to bond 😉 

During the wedding, it is unlikely you’ll see a lot of me, but that’s a good thing and completely normal! I’m not one of those videographers with masses amounts of kit and giant tripods or cranes. My kit is very minimal. I use the Sony A7iii and Sony A7sii (for those that are camera savvy) which are incredible small and light weight cameras. Small so that I blend in with the crowd and that I’m not too noticeable and light weight so that they enable me to run around capturing all those natural moments with ease! 

How I work before the wedding

One thing a lot of people ask me too (which I’ll briefly touch on as I will definitely expand on this soon!) is how well do I work alongside a photographer? In short, very well. I am always happy to speak to any photographer before the day if they feel they’d like to. If not, I always introduce myself when we first meet on the day and I always try to work with them. We’re both there for one purpose only and that is to capture your day perfectly, so I absolutely love it when we can work like besties! 

I am lucky enough to be on a few photographer’s recommendation lists too, so I work with lots of familiar faces again and again! High fives to my dream teams! 

How I work after the wedding

Shortly after the wedding, I try to upload a small sneak peek onto social media as I know it’s so damn exciting, regardless of what video package you’ve gone for. However during busy periods this may not always happen. If you have booked “The Good Stuff” which includes the 1 min Instagram trailer, this is different and I will upload this within 3 weeks of the wedding. 

I create a highlights film, which is approximately 10 minutes long give or take containing all the best moments filmed on the day. A lot of people worry that I won’t be putting in all the clips and that they will miss out, but this isn’t the case. I film short clips throughout the day and throughout my 6 years of experience doing this, I definitely have a trained eye to only capture the best moments and have learnt to always be one step ahead. I’m basically a psychic that predicts everything on the day! The only clips that don’t make the final cut are either duplicates; if someone walks in front of the camera or just shots that aren’t aesthetically pleasing.

Do I capture the full ceremony and speeches?

For those worried I won’t capture the whole ceremony or speeches – fear not! I do. I use 2 cameras to capture these important parts of the day so that we’ve got 2 great angles as well as using about 4 external microphones. During the ceremony, I try to only clip one mic onto one of you. 

The full edit of the ceremony and speeches are additional extras to purchase, but one of these is part of “The Good Stuff” package. 

Finally the style of the wedding videographer you book is probably the most important thing without you perhaps realising! Everything I’ve mentioned in this blog is how I do things. I am a natural wedding videographer, therefore I love to capture only natural and organic moments and avoid staging. I capture the laughter and the emotion as well as all the fun! Some videographers out there are completely different and love to stage things – it’s all about research! So look into your ideal kind of style. If you’re after the natural and emotive but with a fun twist then have a look at some of my films in my portfolio here. 

Wedding Video links

Photographer: Mindy Coe Photography