Wedding Videography Price List: Price Each Package From the Whole Job

How do I build a wedding videography price list?

Start from the whole job, not the wedding day. A package price is every hour the wedding costs you (coverage, the drive, the edit, the admin) multiplied by the hourly rate that pays your income goal, with the second shooter and licences added at cost. The price list is that one sum, repeated per package.

A caveat before the numbers: I write pricing maths and have never filmed a wedding. The hours, fees and packages below are stand-ins that make the sum visible, and none of them is a market price. Keep a log for your next three weddings and overwrite them.

The main package below is a highlight film plus ceremony and speeches edits. It is assumed to take 8 hours of coverage, 2 of driving, 30 of editing and 4 of calls, planning, upload and delivery. Hard costs are an assumed $400 second shooter and a $50 music licence:

Coverage is 8 of the 44 hours. Editing is 30.

Wedding videographer pricing calculator: price one wedding

Overwrite the ten inputs with your own. "Hours on site" is your coverage, and "Price of the job" is the figure that goes on the price list.

Billable hours a week counts all paid-job time: filming, driving, cutting the films and the calls and uploads that belong to a booked wedding. Marketing and gear upkeep are left out. The example uses 26 a week over 44 weeks, which is 1,144 a year.

Those hours have to pay for everything. ($63,000.00 / (1 - 0.25) + $16,100.00) / 1,144 = $87.50: the take-home goal before tax, plus a year of cameras, lenses, audio, insurance, software, storage and the vehicle. Each input is explained in the freelance hourly rate calculator guide.

The 25% set aside for tax is my placeholder. For scale, the IRS puts the self-employment tax rate at 15.3%, made of 12.4% for Social Security and 2.9% for Medicare (IRS: Self-employment tax, read 9 October 2026), and income tax comes on top of that. A licensed tax professional can tell you the percentage to use.

How many weddings a year does your price have to carry?

If weddings are your only paid work, each one must carry the revenue you need divided by the weddings you can book. That count is yours to supply.

The example price of $4,300.00 assumes 26 weddings a year: 1,144 billable hours / 44 job hours. Book fewer and the same $100,100.00 is spread over fewer films:

To test your own count in the calculator, set billable hours a week to weddings x job hours / working weeks. With 44 job hours and 44 weeks that is simply the wedding count: type 20 and the price is the 20-wedding row.

Other paid work changes this. If corporate or event shoots fill the remaining hours at the same hourly rate, the example price stands; the freelance day rate calculator guide prices those jobs.

Wedding videography packages pricing: a worked price list

Define each package by what you deliver, give it its own coverage, editing and admin hours, and run the sum once per row.

Editing drives the price, not the day. In the example package editing is 68.2% of the job hours and coverage is 18.2%. From the highlight film to the full-day documentary, coverage grows by 4 hours ($350) and editing by 26 hours ($2,275).

Check the last column of the row you sell most against your bookings. If you only edit footage that others shoot, the video editing pricing guide covers hours per finished minute.

How much for a videographer for 4 hours?

With these assumptions, $1,887.50: 4 hours of coverage still bring travel, editing and admin. It is 43.9% of the 8-hour example, not half, because the drive and most of the admin do not shrink.

An hourly quote for the day alone misses most of the job. $87.50 x 4 hours plus the $50 licence is $400, which leaves $1,487.50 of work unbilled. To quote by the coverage hour and still be paid for the whole job, the figure is $471.88 an hour.

On the 8-hour example, billing only the day gives $1,150.00 and leaves $3,150.00 unbilled; the whole job is $537.50 per coverage hour.

How to price a second shooter and the music licence

Pass both through as hard costs at what they cost you, and add the editing hours the extra footage creates.

Here the second shooter is an assumed $50 an hour of coverage, $400 for the day (use the shooter's own quote), and the second camera adds an assumed 4 editing hours ($350). Without them the example package is $3,550, so the second shooter adds $750 in total. Time spent booking and briefing the shooter goes in admin hours.

Music is a licence cost, not a free input. The U.S. Copyright Office says: "Generally, to use the sound recordings or musical works of another artist, you must" do one of three things: use a work already in the public domain; "Get permission from the copyright holder directly, or license the work according to the terms set by the licensing contract"; or rely on a statutory limitation or exception. It adds that a sound recording and the music in it "are commonly owned and licensed separately" (U.S. Copyright Office: What Musicians Should Know about Copyright, read 9 October 2026).

The $50 here is an assumed fee for one track from a licensed music library; use the fee on your own licence. This is general information, not legal advice. What a licence covers, and where the film may be posted, is set by its terms; ask a lawyer if unsure.

Add-on prices: drone footage, raw footage, same-day edit, extra hour

Price each add-on as its own extra hours times the same hourly rate, plus any hard cost at cost.

An extra coverage hour costs more than an hour. In the example, each coverage hour comes with 3.75 editing hours (30 / 8), so one more hour is 4.75 hours of work plus the second shooter: $465.63, not $87.50.

Drone footage has a licensing step. The FAA says a small drone under 55 pounds can be flown for work or business by following its Part 107 guidelines (FAA: Certificated Remote Pilots including Commercial Operators, read 9 October 2026), and: "In order to fly your drone under the FAA's Small UAS Rule (Part 107), you must obtain a Remote Pilot Certificate from the FAA" (FAA: Become a Certificated Remote Pilot, read 9 October 2026). Check both pages before you list the add-on.

Travel surcharge, deposit and payment schedule

A travel surcharge is the extra driving time times the hourly rate, plus mileage. A deposit is a percentage of the price that you choose.

The mileage figure is the IRS standard mileage rate for business use, 76 cents a mile for 1 July to 31 December 2026 (IRS: Standard mileage rates, read 9 October 2026). It is a tax deduction rate, not a rule for what to charge, and it changes. Bill mileage per job or keep it in yearly expenses, not both.

The 30% is a policy choice. One check: $1,290 covers the $450.00 of hard costs and 9.6 hours of your time. Whether a deposit can be kept after a cancellation depends on your contract and local law; have a lawyer review the terms.

How much to charge for wedding videography as a beginner

Use beginner inputs, not a beginner "going rate". The formula is the same; the income goal, the expenses and the number of weddings change.

This example assumes a part-time first season: a $32,000.00 take-home goal, $8,000.00 of expenses, a 20% tax reserve, 12 billable hours a week and one camera, so no second shooter:

The goal is 50.8% of the first example's, yet the price is $4,050.00, close to $4,300.00. The year holds only 12 weddings, so each one carries $48,000.00 / 12.

Charging half, $2,025, leaves $1,975 per wedding after the licence. The same goal then needs 24.3 weddings, about 1,069 hours of work. A lower starting price is a choice to work those hours or to accept a lower income.

Wedding video price list formulas, and a spreadsheet vs a copied package sheet

The calculator fits in five cells. Inputs sit in column B, one block per package.

A package sheet copied from another videographer carries their costs, editing speed and wedding count. One built on your hours tells you whether a price pays you. Put on it: each package with its films, coverage hours and price; the add-ons; the travel zone and surcharge; the deposit and balance dates; and who is licensing the music.

The freelance rate and quote spreadsheet costs $14.99 once and opens in Excel or Google Sheets. Its first step works out a break-even hourly rate from take-home goal, tax set-aside, expenses, billable hours and working weeks, and then a recommended rate at the profit margin you enter (the rate on this page includes no margin). Its second step prices a project: estimated hours times the rate, plus a materials or software cost and a rush or complexity markup.

Know its limits for wedding work: the freelance pricing template has no package table, no coverage and editing split, and no second-shooter or weddings-per-year cells. A package goes in as one project, with the whole job's hours as project hours and the hard costs as materials. It also does not produce a branded quote; the freelance quote template guide covers that document.

Step-by-step: Wedding Videography Price List: Price Each Package From the Whole Job

1. Set the hourly rate. Take-home goal divided by (1 - tax reserve), plus a year of business expenses, divided by the hours you work on booked jobs in a year. The example comes to $87.50.
2. Add up one wedding's hours. Coverage, the round-trip drive, editing and admin for each package. The example package: 8 + 2 + 30 + 4 = 44 hours.
3. Price the package. 44 hours x $87.50 = $3,850.00. Add the second shooter and music licence at cost, $450.00: $4,300.00.
4. Check the weddings a year. Divide billable hours a year by job hours. The example assumes 26 weddings; with fewer and no other paid work, divide the revenue needed by your own count.
5. Price add-ons, travel and the deposit. Each is its own hours times the rate plus hard costs. One extra coverage hour is $465.63; a 30% deposit on the example is $1,290.

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