Pricing wedding videography is one of the hardest things to get right as a freelancer. Set your rates too low and you work yourself into the ground for clients who still ask for more. Set them too high without the portfolio to back it up and inquiries dry up. Here is how to build a pricing structure that reflects your real costs and positions your work correctly in the market.
Start With Your True Cost Per Wedding
Before you can price a wedding, you need to know what it actually costs you to deliver one. Add up your shooting hours, travel time, editing time, color grading, music licensing, delivery, and any second shooter or gear rental costs. Most videographers underestimate editing time — a six-hour wedding typically requires 25 to 40 hours of post-production for a full film. Multiply your hourly rate by those hours, add hard costs, and you have your floor. Your package price needs to clear that floor before you see any actual profit.
Do not forget overhead: insurance, software subscriptions, storage, and marketing all cost money. Divide your annual overhead by the number of weddings you plan to shoot and add that to every booking.
How to Structure Wedding Videography Packages
Most wedding videographers offer two or three package tiers. A base package covers the essentials: ceremony coverage, a highlight film of three to five minutes, and digital delivery. A mid-tier adds reception coverage, a longer film, or raw footage. A premium tier includes a second shooter, drone footage, extended coverage hours, or same-day edits. Each tier should feel like a clear step up — not just more hours, but more deliverable value.
If you are unsure what clients in your market expect at each price point, see wedding highlight film vs. full video: which do couples actually want — it covers how to position deliverables so clients understand the difference.
What Wedding Videographers Charge in 2026
In most Canadian markets, wedding videography packages start around $1,500 for part-day coverage with a short highlight film. Mid-range packages — full day, two films, second shooter — typically run $3,000 to $5,500. High-end studios and cinematic-style videographers in major cities regularly charge $6,000 to $10,000 and above. Your position in that range should reflect your portfolio quality, your market size, and how many weddings you want to take per year. Shooting fewer weddings at higher rates is usually more sustainable than filling a calendar at entry-level pricing.
When and How to Raise Your Rates
If you are booking more than 70 percent of your inquiries, your prices are probably too low. The goal is to convert the right clients at a rate that lets you do your best work — not to fill every weekend. Raise rates at the start of a new season, not mid-year. Give existing inquiries a grace period at your old rate, then hold the new pricing. A $500 increase per booking adds up to real money over a season without dramatically changing your inquiry volume.
Threecus helps you track your inquiry-to-booking conversion rate over time, so you can see clearly when you are underpricing and make informed decisions about when to move rates up.
Deposits and Payment Schedules
Require a non-refundable retainer — typically 25 to 50 percent of the package price — to hold a date. This protects you if a couple cancels months out when you have already turned away other inquiries. A common structure is: retainer at booking, 50 percent at a set milestone (90 days before the wedding), and the balance one to two weeks before the date. Never rely on receiving the final payment on the wedding day itself.
- Retainer (25–50%): due at contract signing to hold the date
- Mid-payment (50%): due 90 days before the wedding
- Balance (remaining): due 7–14 days before the date
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