Most couples hire a showreel. That is how you get a beautiful 90 seconds and a wedding day that sounded like a corridor. Choosing a videographer is an operations interview dressed as taste. Style matters — we grade warm, we do not chase drone candy — but the film lives or dies on marks, audio and who is actually in the room.
Watch a whole film, not a montage
Ask for a complete feature from a venue in the same family as yours: a hotel ballroom if you are at Claridge’s, a château if you are at Tourreau, a house if you are at Hedsor. You want to hear speeches. You want to see whether the operator left the aisle during vows. A montage can be cut from any three hours. A 12-minute film cannot hide a missed processional.
Who is holding the second camera
“Two videographers” sometimes means the owner plus a freelancer who has not seen the floor plan. We are a husband-and-wife crew. When we cannot both be there we say so, and we name the second filmmaker. On the day, two people who already share a look language do not need a huddle in the aisle.
Audio questions that end the call quickly
- Lavs on the couple, or only a camera mic?
- A recorder on the lectern for speeches?
- A backup if the hotel PA is dirty?
- What happens in wind — terrace, cliff, Scottish lawn?
If the answer to all four is a shrug, you are buying pictures. Pictures are not a wedding film.
Edit, delivery, and who actually cuts
Ask who edits. A filmed-by-the-owner, cut-by-an-intern model will not match the showreel. Ask for a delivery window in weeks, not “when it’s ready”. Ask whether ceremony and speeches are a separate edit (our Deluxe) or only a trailer. Instagram teasers are a different cut, not a crop of the feature.
Logistics the quote should already contain
Load-in time at a London hotel. Gravel at a château — no dollies. Two-camera marks for vows, written, not improvised when the music starts. Overtime rate after the contracted hours. Travel and hotels for destination, in writing, before the 20% deposit. If those lines are missing, you will pay them later as mood.
Taste, without the brochure language
A day at Cliveden or the Savoy is not a day in a barn
Listed London rooms will not let you pre-rig. Country houses will not give you a duty manager. Château gravel will announce a trolley like a train. The videographer who has not filmed your kind of room will spend the morning inventing marks. Ask where they stood at a wedding like yours. We can tell you the terrace at Cliveden, the mandap under mixed LED at a Park Lane hotel, the wind on Tourreau, the dock at Villa Pizzo. That is not branding. That is a floor plan we have already walked.
Red flags we would walk away from, if we were booking
A showreel with no speeches. A website that will not name a price band. A second shooter described as “someone from our team” with no name. A contract that is silent on overtime, delivery weeks, and what happens if the venue changes. A drone promised for a listed London hotel. A request to “just get everything” in six hours. If the call is only about packages and never about the floor plan, you are being sold a product, not a crew.
A short working list
- Watch one complete film from a venue in the same family as yours.
- Confirm two named filmmakers and who edits.
- Confirm radio mics and a speech recorder.
- Get hours, overtime, travel and deposit in one PDF.
- Ask what they will refuse to do on the day — a good crew has a list.
You should like how they see faces. That is taste. Everything else is whether they can still see faces when the coordinator is late, the wind has turned, and the best man has the microphone. Watch our films from Tourreau, Cliveden, North Berwick and La Fortaleza. If the pace feels like you, enquire with the date and the venue. If it does not, hire someone slower or faster — not someone cheaper who promises the same pictures. A useful extra: ask how they behave when a ritual cannot be filmed. A good crew already has a sentence for that. Ours is: we step back, keep audio if we are allowed, and do not invent a shot from the doorway.