How to Plan Your Wedding Videography on a Budget

In years past, wedding budget experts advised having a friend videotape your wedding, but we now know that is a big Wedding Don’t. Yes, anyone can own a good video camera, but it takes the trained eye of a professional videographer to capture the most beautiful and most special moments of a wedding, and then expertly edit wedding footage into your final wedding video creation that you’ll want to watch year after year. Expert videographers have the best video equipment, backups of both cameras and batteries, and the best video editing equipment money can buy. And since the video they shoot is so valuable, wedding videography packages will often be quite pricy.

Here are some ways to plan your wedding videography on a budget, so that you can have a professional shoot your wedding video without costing a fortune:

• Ask your wedding planner and wedding venue for recommendations to the best professional videographers they know. It’s a wedding myth that the best wedding videographers will charge more because they’re well-known. In fact, top wedding videographers can often offer discount prices because they are well-known and successful. And top video professionals can work within your budget.

• Limit the amount of time you’ll need your professional wedding videographer at your wedding venues. If you’re on a budget, you don’t need this pro to videotape you getting ready for your wedding. It’s fine to have a friend capture those getting ready moments for you. Plan your cocktail hour and reception to start immediately after your ceremony – a big benefit to booking your wedding at a top NJ wedding venue with ceremony and reception spaces – instead of having your wedding professionals on the clock during the hour or two between those two events. Cut your wedding cake earlier in your reception, and then your videographer can depart. This timing may mean that you can book a four- or five-hour videography package instead of a pricier seven-hour package, and you have all of your wedding’s important moments completed at an earlier hour.

• Hire a local wedding videographer. Many wedding experts charge for their travel time, from the moment they leave their own parking lot to the time they return back to their own parking lot. So hiring a top NJ wedding videographer who is somewhat local, and measures up in your interview process, can save you money. (Never hire the closest and cheapest wedding videographer, since that can lead to a wedding disaster when the ‘expert’ is not very expert at all.)

• Ask if they offer any referral discounts. If, say, you book your videographer, then refer him or her to your engaged friend and she books them as well, you may get a $500 discount or a nice percentage of your videography package credited to you. Not all wedding experts offer this kind of discount, but it can’t hurt to ask.

• Check your chosen wedding videographer’s social media sites to find pop-up discounts and special pricing they share with their fans and followers.

• Ask if you can get a free highlight reel as part of your wedding videography package.

• Skip the fancy special effects. Black-and-white, sepia and color-fades are often included in what a wedding videographer does with the final version of your video, and extra effects like animation will often cost extra because of the time it takes during the editing process. Plus, kitschy special effects will date your wedding video, and may not be pleasing to you in the future.
• Skip the fancy personalized DVD case or flash drive case with your monogram on it. A simple case will cost less.

• Don’t skip the option of having a second shooter, an additional videographer, at your wedding, since two professionals can capture the big moments of your wedding from different angles. And when your wedding venue is expansive, two shooters can be in two places at once, capturing the beauty and excitement of your outdoor wedding elements as well as the festivities in your wedding ballroom.

• Ask if you can order your wedding video ‘raw,’ which means un-edited, which will cost a lot less for the videographer. You can have this video edited later, when you have more money to spend, and perhaps as a very special anniversary present.

• Be patient for your finished wedding video. It can often take months for the best wedding videographers in NJ to edit and deliver your wedding video, due to the time it takes to edit. If you ask for a rush order, it will cost you more.

• Bridal party members don’t need their own copies of your wedding video, and if you’d like your parents to have a copy of your wedding video, you may choose to give them that freebie highlight reel, or ask your videographer to make a second copy of your wedding video for free (some will offer multiple copies as part of their package, or be open to a request, since technology makes it easy to ‘burn’ a high quality copy of your video once it’s edited.)