How many hours of coverage do you actually need?

Some videographers sell by the hour. Some sell a fixed block, ceremony to first dance. We cover the whole day in every collection, and we do that for reasons we'll come to. But we also think couples should understand what each cut-off point actually costs, because "how many hours" is really the question "which parts of the day do we want to keep?", and that deserves a proper answer rather than a number.

This isn't about price. That's a different question with its own page. This is only about what gets filmed and what doesn't.

Every cut-off loses something specific, and it is nearly always something you didn't expect to want.

The four common cut-offs

Ceremony to first dance

The classic block, about eight hours. You keep the ceremony, the afternoon, dinner, the speeches and the first dance, which is most of what people picture when they think of a wedding film. What you lose is the morning and the night. The morning is the only footage of each of you separately: the dress going on, the letter, the ten quiet minutes before the car. The night is the room once it has let go. Couples who choose this block are often the ones who tell us a year later that they wish they had the morning.

Preparation to first dance

Add the morning and you have the shape most of our couples end up wanting: the whole story from the first cup of tea to the first dance, around twelve hours. The only thing missing is the party, and whether that matters depends on your wedding. If your crowd are dancers, it matters. If the first dance is the last thing you're sentimental about, it doesn't.

Preparation to an hour into the band

This is the point at which, in our experience, the film has everything it needs. An hour after the first dance the floor is full, the shape of the night is clear, the parents have danced and the shoes have come off. After that, the footage gets repetitive and the guests get less keen on being filmed, and both of those are fair.

The whole day

Some couples want the end: the last song, the sparklers, the lift home. It's a lovely closing scene when the day has one. Often it doesn't, and the evening simply thins out, which is nothing anyone wants to watch back. We'd stay for a planned ending. We'd gently talk you out of paying for an unplanned one.

Why we cover the whole day anyway

Because of the morning, mostly. Every time we have seen a film with the morning cut off, the film starts with the ceremony, and the ceremony starts with two people who already look like they've been through something. The nerves, the calm, the moment your mother saw the dress: that is the first act, and a film without a first act starts in the middle. The evening we cover because we're already there, and because the cost of staying is small next to the cost of missing the one thing that happened at eleven. So all of our collections include all-day coverage, and the choice you make with us is what gets made from it, rather than what gets filmed.

If you're choosing a block elsewhere

• Start earlier rather than finish later. If you have to choose, the morning is worth more to the film than the last hour of the night. Nearly every couple who has told us what they missed has named the morning.
• Count the speeches as sacred. Any block that might end before the speeches finish is the wrong block. Speeches run late. Plan for them to.
• Ask what happens when the day runs over. Because it will. Is the videographer flexible, or do they leave at nine on the dot with the first dance still ten minutes away? You want to know that now.
• Think about who you're filming for. The morning is for you. The ceremony and speeches are for everybody. The night is for the people who were on the floor. Decide who the film is for and the hours follow.

Hours are how the industry prices a day. They are a poor way to understand one. The better question is what you would be sorry not to have, and for almost every couple we've met, the honest answer to that is longer than the block they were about to book.