Last updated July 2025
Are you insured? Can I see a COI+AIs?
Yes. We retain production insurance (GL + E&O + other stuff) for, at a minimum, every day that we’re actively shooting, sometimes more. We’ll have all COI’s and AIs available upon request long before your wedding day.
What does the contract look like?
You recieve a non-transferrable perpetual license to use everything we give you for non-commercial purposes. The only thing you can’t do is sell the footage or use it for advertising.
So if you have another vendor who wants to use the footage (say the venue wants to put our drone shots on their website), they need to get permission (i.e. a license) from us to do so. You can’t just give it to them. Any contracts you may have to that effect (with venues, other vendors, etc.) are null and void, as you do not have those rights, and it would be good to explain that if you get the chance.
What if we cancel?
If you cancel, we keep everything you’ve paid up to that point, and your responsibility for any future planned payments stops there. So you won’t owe anything, but you won’t get anything back. If we cancel, you get everything you’ve paid up to that point back, and I’ll do my best to find a replacement.
To avoid this entirely, we also offer a “backup booking” addon, which allows us to reserve another videographer for an extra fee, just in case.
“We have some spare rooms available for our destination wedding. Can we get a discount/waiver on travel fees if we let you use them?”
Yes. We don’t charge any markup for travel, so any block discounts, plane ticket discounts, or other travel cost cuts that you can provide go right back to your price.
We don’t care about the interviews. Can you just do videography?
Really? Not even the super fast, day-of, $75 option (ask about it if you read this far and didn’t see it)? You won’t humor me even a little bit?
I care about the interviews. They’re what make these videos art. They’re what make your wedding video unique. I currently offer one package (the camcorder package) that doesn’t have time set aside for interviews, but the reason I do that is because I’m going to be using the extra record time on those cameras to interview all of your guests, and capture as many wild candids as possible.
The idea with every wedding video I do is simple: every couple should be irreplaceable and uniquely them, and no two wedding videos should ever be too much alike. You need to have something that’s going to make your video a kind of video that only you can do. If not interviews, then what else?
Seriously, I’m always open to ideas. If you give some more info about the vibe of your wedding, we might be able to figure something out.
Can you record our vows (like with a mic)?
Of course! Comes standard with every videography package, but the number of times people have asked me this… do other videographers not record the vows? If you’re Catholic, the vows are the sacrament, they’re the whole point. If you don’t have the vows, you don’t have a marriage. We ALWAYS get the vows.
At a minimum, we’ll have a lav mic on the groom and the officiant, and if there’s a handheld mic being passed through to a speaker (so the audience can hear), we’ll be tapping into that, and sometimes we’ll also have a mic on the bride (it’ll be white, so it’s not super obvious).
Do you offer custom packages?
Once upon a time we offered the normal “package” system, but in mid-2025 we transitioned to doing everything custom (because we’d basically been doing everything custom anyways). There’s a lot that we can do that’s not listed on out bookings page, and to be completely honest, if it’s anything to do with filmmaking, photography, or media in general, theres a 90% chance that we already know the local talent that we can either bring on or consult. Doesn’t matter how crazy the idea is, odds are we can do it.
Point is, if you’ve got a unique idea for your videography, or a specific focus that most couples don’t have, not only can we accommodate it, we’ve probably already done it.
Can you do specific song requests?
We maintain access to multiple copyrighted music libraries, which give us access to use music of most genres, as well as music from various prominent artists, in the videos we make. We also often reach out to music producers and record labels for sync licenses (the right to use songs in videos) on behalf of our clients.
The end result of this is that if you wish to either use a song already present in our libaries, or merely have a preference as to a specific genre of music, we can fulfull that reqpest for free. For specific licensing agreements that require us to negotiate sync licenses for songs not already present in our available libraries, we bill for both the agrement and a markup to cover the time it takes to reach out, but only for the portions of the agreement that serve your interests.
So for example: if you’re a couple that doesn’t care about posting the flagship video publicly online, and you’re only interested in getting a specific song into it for when you watch it back on your own, we would attempt to negotiate that specific license (a private use sync license) with the song’s rights-holder and either work out a separate agreement for public use (assuming we want to display the video publicly, and we’d pay for that portion of the agreement out of pocket, and not bill anything for time spent negotiating) or simply use a different song (one we already have the rights to) in any public displays of the video.
As a rule, we avoid copyright infringement, even for completely private videos. This is something that many of our competitiors take a more relaxed approach to, especially for private videos (doing this is often seen as a “victimless crime”), we do not do this. Every song we use, for both public and private deliverables, we will have to secure the rights to for those respective purposes. No exceptions.
Why aren’t you on The Knot/Zola/CBC/etc.?
Oh boy here we go.
Wedding Pro
The Knot/Wedding Wire are confirmed scammers. They have been known by vendors, former employees, and multiple Fortune 500 businesses to charge exorbitant rates for ad placements which they fail to actually deliver, in addition to having terrible customer service, and (allegedly) committing contract fraud.
This has all been common knowlege for multiple years now, feel free to google, you’ll find books’ worth of details. The only reason they continue to be even remotely viable as a business is because they have a semi-captive market (that’s you, the customer) that continues using the site because it offers some other (pretty great from what I hear) services such as easy RSVPs, wedding websites, etc., and it’s easier than finding vendors manually.
While there’s certainly nothing wrong with that, just know that the vendors on WeddingWire/The Knot charge what they charge not because that’s their skill level/value/whatever, but because they’re shelling out thousands of dollars per quarter just to be on the site, and they need to recoup that. It’s not like Facebook/Instagram/Twitter where you just make an account, you have to pay $$$$$ for the privilege.
Also, check out their stylish “F” rating on BBB. To be honest, business-wise, I’d still be willing to use them (there is a massive market of couples there who will never look anywhere else, and I am missing out), I just have a rule about not working with people who commit fraud.
Zola
Zola used to be a somewhat ok option, but recently seems to have started trending down a similar path, taking an Ashley Madison style (that’s a link to Wikepedia, not the actual affair site) strategy with the vendor marketplace business model. In the Zola system, my vendor profile is free, but Zola would charge a fee whenever I wish to respond to your inquiry (currently about $12, from what I understand; they’d hide your contact info from me until I pay), in addition to attempting to upsell me on premium profile placement plans.
Of course, there’s an easy way to exploit that for profit: permit the site to be overrun with bots and fake leads, so I spend a bunch of money responding to couples who don’t exist. There’s some evidence that not only is this happening, it’s actually being done by Zola itself, as many vendors (see Reddit, Google, etc.) are reporting getting a bunch of low-quality/bot inquiries when they’re on the free plan, then getting almost no inquiries when they switch to the paid plan.
Zola also presents an option to couples looking to inquire about a vendor’s services, which allows them to copy and paste that inquiry to multiple other vendors on the site, who all have to pay the $12+ fee if they wish to respond. So you check a box and 6 other random videographers get your inquiry, vendors who you’ve never talked to, aren’t aware exist, and probably aren’t even remotely interested in dealing with. So in addition to possibly having scam bots on their site, Zola also turns you into a scam bot, basically.
So if you’re using Zola, do all of your vendors a favor and inquire via their actual websites.
CBC
Catholic Bridal Collective charges a fairly reasonable fee compared to the prior options, but their vendor directory currently lacks proper filter functionality. You can search for videographers, and you can search for vendors in Ohio, but you can’t search for “videographers in Ohio”. And they charge $125/year for me to sign up.
Like seriously. Come on. I am not a web developer. I run this website myself with some open source software and a template. This website is free, no Squarespace subscription or anything. And it’s mediocre, but it’s mine, and I like it.
My website, like theirs, has posts, and those posts have tags. And I bet, with my complete lack of any skill or professional training, I could figure out how to provide not even a “search” function (that’s a whole different thing), but just merely a “filter” function, that lets you filter posts by multiple tags simultaneously. That’s all they’d need. For a vendor directory site to lack this functionality is absolutely asinine.
Forgive me, this is actually the one that makes me the most sad. I’d love to connect more with the national Catholic community, a web service like this has a ton of potential, and I’m not aware of any current direct competitors. This could be great, and make an absolute TON of money.
But this missing key feature, in addition to their weird sign-up rules (They only “accept applications” 2 months out of the year. Why? No idea it’s dumb.), just isn’t something that I can reasonably justify. I’m not paying $125/yr to a website service that can’t figure out how to make one of these:
What do you actually use, then?
This. I also might be joining Gig Salad for videography soon, which would allow you to essentially escrow funds with them if for some reason you want to hire me but you don’t trust me to perform. But really, my contact info is right below that form you just scrolled past. That form, mind you, doesn’t have an auto-response, it just goes straight to my email. That number takes calls and texts. I don’t use any auto-reply or spam bot retargeting, all my emails are written by me, all my calls and texts are really me calling and texting you.
I understand that you might not want me to have your info, but really, think about it this way: if you don’t trust me with your contact info, are you really gonna trust me with your money? If you don’t trust me to not spam you, then just don’t trust me at all, and don’t worry about inquiring. Easy peasy.
I prefer it that way. I’m able to really help a lot of people who contact me specifically because I know that they’re actually trying to talk to me. they’re willing to trust me with their contact info. The form submission I got is something they actually entered in, and not a copy of an inquiry they sent to me and 10 other vendors because they left a box checked. We’ll deal with each other as real humans, it’s way easier this way.
Wait, are you Catholic?
Yep.
Oh Wait, You’re Catholic! I have a child out of wedlock/am lutheran/ate a hamburger last Friday/etc.. Will you still be able to videograph my wedding?
Chill. I’m a videographer, not a priest. As long as your wedding isn’t a black mass and you’re not performing animal sacrifices to foreign deities, it’s probably fine. If you are performing animal sacrifices to foreign deities, I know a couple videographers I can recommend (Actually though, I don’t. Not a fan of animal cruelty. Also not sure why this is what I thought of, but I’m rolling with it.).
The main concern with any kind of non-sacramental wedding is a particular sin called “scandal”. Generally speaking, “scandal” just means leading another person into sin somehow. For weddings, the main concern is that if someone who’s known as a Catholic attends an illicit wedding (ex. one where both Bride and Groom are baptized Catholic, but they’re getting married in a barn instead of a church, or one where one of the parties is divorced but hasn’t gotten an annullment, etc.), this might give the (false) impression to those around them that the Church/God is ok with these things.
So if you’re doing something with your marriage that the Church won’t like, and you’ve got Catholic relatives or friends you plan on inviting, definitely check with them (and they’ll check with their priests). But I’m not your relative. I’m not your friend (yet). I’m the camera guy. Nobody at your wedding is going to know who I am, and nobody is going to care about my particular opinions WRT your faith choices (and to be clear, I probably don’t have any. I’m not gonna judge you, I’m sure you have your reasons). I’m not going to be scandalizing anyone. If it’s a gay wedding, we might have a problem, I’m honestly not even sure about that though (no one’s asked yet and digging into theology is a pain). And if you’re not both baptized Catholic, there’s basically no other way a technical issue could even arise, let alone one that I, as your videographer, would have to worry about.
So really, it’s no big deal.