I have to admit that for many couples there is some initial sticker shock in shopping for a wedding videographer. From my experience,the average pre-conceived price is around $500-$700. I’m not sure where the notion comes from,but my guess is that this price is comparable with the cost of the DJ and about a half to a third of the photographer price who is expected to do the bulk of the work on the wedding day.

A couple of things to keep in mind. The DJ only works on the wedding day so if he charges $500 for 5 hours he makes $100 per hour. The photographer will certainly be busy on your wedding day,usually shooting the bridal party getting ready,setting up family shots after the ceremony,and lugging around the dance floor during the reception.

However,the hard work of the wedding videographer is often overlooked. We are often staying in the background to be as unobtrusive as possible,yet still need to get those amazing shots that,when the day is over,you want to have in order to remember everything that happened.

But let’s say on your wedding day,you paid $700 to your videographer for 7 hours of work,you would not be paying $100/hour because of all of the post-production work –the video work that comes after your wedding day. Photographers do it,although the amount of time varies from photographer to photographer depending on how much Photoshop work they like to do.

From my experience,though,no matter how good the wedding videographer,the amount of editing and post wedding video work is pretty similar. Figure an additional 10-20 hours of work including digitizing footage (putting it into the editing system),editing,adding effects,rendering,conversion to DVD format,authoring the DVD,packaging,and shipping.

So,when shopping for a videographer and looking at prices,consider the total package of everything that you are getting and I think you’ll find you’re actually paying significantly less on a per hour basis for your wedding videographer than for any of your other vendors.

Here’s another viewpoint on the subject:
Why do wedding videographers charge more than wedding photographers?