Why Do Wedding Videographers Charge So Much? The Real Reason Behind the Price
As a 30-year-old teenager, I have been anxiously gobbling up every new episode of The Summer I Turned Pretty. Spoiler warning, but there’s a wedding subplot brewing, and in one scene, the main character goes bakery-hopping to price out her fiancé’s dream cake, which is a two-tier dark chocolate cake with mirror glaze and raspberry coulis filling. The quote she gets? $750.
Cue the collective gasp. “Why is everything for weddings so expensive? Are we all being scammed? That damn wedding tax!”
My face when I see how much a wedding costs in 2025
I can’t speak for mirror-glazed cakes and a baker’s cost of doing business, but as a wedding videographer, I can tell you that I get these questions constantly. And I get it. When you see a ginormous price tag on a wedding film package, it looks like I’m pocketing thousands for a single day’s work. But the truth is that after all is said and done, my take-home pay is a fraction of that number. Like the tinsiest, tiniest fraction.
Let’s Break It Down
(PS I literally pulled up my tax returns from the last 3 years to provide you with receipts, okay?)
So, let’s take my average package price in the previous three years, which has been $5,600.
Sounds like a solid number, right? But let’s peel back the layers.
Transaction Fees: Right off the bat, about $170 disappears into processing fees.
Travel Costs: On average, I spend $1,000 per wedding between airfare, car rentals, gas, parking, and lodging. (And no, where I stay and how I fly is not glamorous, just clean and safe is what I require).
Taxes: Roughly $500 per wedding is set aside for Uncle Sam. (Usually more is owed by the end of the year, but let’s keep it simple.)
Gear: Over three years, I’ve spent about $17,000 on cameras, lenses, drones, batteries, memory cards, and repairs. That breaks down to about $375 per wedding.
Retirement Savings: I contribute $500/month to my Roth IRA since I don’t have employer benefits. Spread across weddings, that’s a chunk too.
Second Videographers: I rarely require a second videographer unless it has specifically been requested by the couple or I feel it is necessary, so on average, I have spent $3,000/year paying trusted second videographers and assistants.
Meals: Weddings often require multiple travel days, which means I must find food. Additionally, I am spending 10+ hour wedding days on my feet running around, where I barely get 20 minutes to eat. Food comes out to $100–$150 per wedding weekend.
Software & Services: Editing programs, website hosting and domain, and client management tools average around $100 per wedding.
Office/Education: Things like office furniture, supplies, books, and educational courses run about $120–$150 per wedding.
Insurance: Costs have risen from $30/month to $60/month, but, averaging it over the last few years it’s about $45/month.
Health Costs: Thankfully rare, but still necessary. Costs like physical therapy for job-related strain averages $50 per wedding. (I also want to acknowledge here the immense privilege of having a working spouse whose employer provides health insurance. That is an additional cost I do not have to worry about.)
Super 8 Film: With developing, scanning, and film stock, this adds about $300 per wedding.
Miscellaneous Costs: New work shoes, charitable giving, or random business expenses = about $50 per wedding.
When you add all that up, my real “profit” on a $5,600 package averages out to just under $2,000.
And that’s before we even talk about the time investment. Because what you see me filming for 10-ish hours on your wedding day is just the tip of the iceberg. What you don’t see is:
Weeks of emails, calls, timelines, venue research, and questionnaires.
It’s hunting for the best travel deals, booking my stay, and planning logistics.
Gear prep, battery charging, backup planning, and then the actual travel days.
And the big one—Editing. It takes me 2–3 weeks per film, crafting a story out of hours of raw footage, music licensing, audio syncing and mastering, color correcting and grading.
8 years of personal time spent taking courses, watching YouTube, reading books, listening to podcasts, and observing other industry professionals to be the best videographer I can be.
All told, that $2,000 shakes out to about $20–$30/hour. Which, yes, is a livable and dignified wage, but nowhere near the glamorous “$500+/hour” people often assume I’m raking in.
I must be clear that I’m not complaining! Truly. I love this work. But, you also must know that I didn’t become a wedding videographer for the money (spoiler: none of us did). I do it because I believe in memory-keeping as a sacred act. Because I want you to feel the butterflies all over again when you’re 80 years old, or let your grandchildren see the way you twirled across the floor during your first dance.
So no, for me, at Honey Fox Films, there isn’t a “wedding tax.” There’s just the real, honest cost of running a business that requires time, skill, business expenses, and a whole lot of heart.
