Should I Book a Content Creator For My Wedding?

Planning a wedding involves countless decisions, from selecting the perfect venue to deciding on a menu and of course choosing which wedding vendors best suit the vibe you want for your big day. One emerging trend in modern weddings is the inclusion of a wedding content creator. But is hiring a wedding content creator worth it, especially if you are already booking a photographer and videographer?

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Like most wedding trends, content creation first originated in America before making it’s way across the Atlantic to the U.K and Ireland. On social media we follow a lot of wedding photographers across the world and have seen wedding content creation discussed a lot over the last couple of years, long before it made it’s way to Northern Ireland. For some time now we have seen local brides and groom’s asking on social media if they should book a content creator or not? Some of our own couples have asked us the same question, so we have created this guide to help answer this question for couples who are considering having a content creator at their wedding.

What is a Wedding Content Creator?

A wedding content creator is someone that captures your wedding in a different way to a wedding photographer or videographer. While photographers and videographers provide high quality images and video that tell the story of your wedding day, a content creator provides mostly video content best viewed on mobile devices, ideal for sharing on social media. They create short-form videos, reels, TikToks, and Instagram Stories very quickly after your wedding, often within 24 hours.

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Pro’s and Con’s Of Booking a Wedding Content Creator for your wedding

Advantages of Having a Wedding Content Creator

  • Quick turnaround time, usually within 24 hours. Couples can often wait several months to receive their completed wedding video from their videographer. While we always aim to provide our brides and groom’s with their photographs within 6-8 weeks, some wedding photographers take much longer than this.

  • Some couples choose to book a content creator for their wedding day as an alternative to a traditional videographer, primarily because content creators tend to be less expensive, This option can be seen by couples as a budget friendly way to capture video content from their wedding day.

Disadvantages of Having a Wedding Content Creator

  • The content they provide is often very low quality, as it’s primarily captured using mobile phones, which can not deliver anywhere near the same level of detail and clarity found in professional photography and videography.

  • Being able to consistently produce stunningly high-quality photographs and captivating videos, while also understanding the necessity of using professional level equipment, requires not only significant technical knowledge but also a great deal of skill and a deep understanding of the intricate use of light. Many wedding content creators often find themselves lacking these essential abilities, which can lead to you not looking your best in the content they produce.

  • Having a wedding content creator can cause issues during your wedding ceremony. You may already have a photographer and videographer, some like ourselves work in a team of two so potentially you could have 2 photographers and 2 videographers, then adding a content creator to the mix as well can cause difficulties especially in a smaller wedding venue.

  • A content creator can get in the way of the work that your photographer and videographer are striving to accomplish. This can lead to situations where some important moments might be missed entirely due to the presence or activities of the content creator.

  • If you are already booking a photographer and a videographer for your special day, the content creator may ultimately provide content that overlaps significantly with what you will already be receiving from them. Their service may become an unnecessary additional expense that does not add any unique value to your wedding experience.

Does Everyone Need a Content Creator
For Their wedding?

Should their be a content creator at every wedding? Probably not. Nobody really needs a wedding content creator. Their primary purpose is to create videos that achieve high engagement rates across various social media platforms, ultimately aiming to capture the attention of a wider audience. They aren’t really providing a record of your wedding day that isn’t already being provided in other ways.

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Unless you are specifically aiming to become an influencer or have aspirations of becoming someone famous in the public eye, you probably don’t need a content creator for your wedding day. Most couples find that a skilled photographers and videographers are more than enough to capture the intimate moments and beautiful details of their celebration without the added pressure of a content creator's presence. It’s probably more beneficial to save your money and simply wait patiently until your hi-resolution photos and high-quality videos come back from the photographers and videographers you have carefully selected and booked for your special day so you can be seen at your best. However in saying that while most people may not need a wedding content creator, if you feel that you want one, you absolutely should book one.

Our Experience Of Working With Wedding
Content Creators

We absolutely hate to be in anyway negative about other wedding vendors, people sometimes see being a wedding vendor as an easy job, trust us it absolutely isn’t, but most wedding vendors including ourselves absolutely love their job. Wedding vendors are mostly small businesses that will always go out of the way to ensure a great experience for their brides and groom’s. We all know how important a wedding day is to our couples! However we feel it’s always important to be upfront and honest in everything we do and our experience of working with wedding content creators at weddings up until now has not been great. We may of course have just been unlucky with the content creators we have worked with, but based on the feedback we have received from other wedding photographers and videographers in Northern Ireland, their experiences have often been very similar to our own.

We have had wedding creators at weddings do some crazy things, that we would never expect to see for example when working with a videographer. The wedding content creators we have worked with seemed to have no understanding around vendors working together for the benefit of the couple. They were extremely invasive and constantly got in the way of the work both ourselves and the videographers were trying to produce. They also produced nothing that was not already being captured by ourselves and the videographers, they basically for the most part just followed us around all day.

On one occasion a content creator actually used my shoulder to rest his mobile phone on during the ceremony, this made me feel uncomfortable and made it difficult to concentrate on doing my job. We also had a wedding content creator walk all the way up the aisle in front of the bride while they used their mobile phone, which meant that they were in all of our photographs from what is an important moment, the videographer also had the same issue with his footage as well. We also have the opposite were they followed the bride up the aisle resulting in the same issue. There have been quite a few other similar issues as well. This is of course very frustrating for us and for the videographers as it can have a real impact on what we are able to provide our couples with. Moments like the bride walking up the aisle are very important for us to get and can’t be redone.

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All of the issues that we have had ourselves and been told about by other photographers and videographers got us thinking about why this is happening. In an ideal world wedding vendors should always try to work together to produce the best possible experience for the couples who have chosen us to be a part of their wedding day. This is just our personal opinion of course so feel free to ignore, but we think that a lot of the issues with content creators come down to a lack of experience working at a wedding, when things happen, how they should be captured and a lack of ability to work with others. Because wedding content creation in Northern Ireland is still quite new, lots of people have jumped on this thinking that turning up to a wedding and shooting some videos on their mobile phone sounds like an easy way to make some money.

Before wedding content creators in Northern Ireland became a thing we had worked with content creators before on commercial photography jobs. They tended to be people who had previous experience of working in the photo and video fields and they were used to capture content that photographers and videographers usually aren’t asked to provide, like behind the scenes stuff for social media. As far as we know none of the experienced content creators that do commercial work seem to be offering their services at weddings. We can only guess that they are unable to compete with the rates being charged by wedding content creators. It would seem for the moment anyway, their are lots of people with little to no experience of working at a wedding and who have no previous photo and video experience, who are now working as wedding content creators. Lots of them seem to be people who tried to become social media influencers, but that didn’t work out for them. There also seems to be a few content creators who are offering content creation as a side hussle, to their existing wedding businesses although their main services are things like being a florist or event styling. We don’t know of anyone good at photo and video who also offers wedding content creation.

What Are The Alternatives To Booking a Content Creator For Your Wedding?

You could say that having a photographer and videographer document your wedding is an alternative but we wouldn’t say that professional photography or videography is an alternative to having a wedding content creator. What you will receive from your photographer and videographers is very different.

However in saying that, basically every vendor you choose for your wedding including photographers and videographers are also usually producing mobile phone content from your wedding. At most weddings, everyone from the make-up artist and hair stylist on the morning of the wedding, right the way through the day, to your band and D.J are uploading content from your wedding to their own social media accounts in real time or shortly after your wedding. We often upload content from the weddings we work at in real time to our Instagram stories for example. If you are following all of your vendors on social media all of that content can be accessed free of charge.

While lots of couples opt to have unplugged wedding ceremonies so that their guest can be in the moment rather than watching their wedding ceremony from behind their phone screen, most guests will snap photos and video throughout your wedding day. There are lots of free apps available that you can ask your guests to use so that you have these all be stored in one place or you could simply create a hashtag for your wedding so you can find your guests social media posts easily.

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How to Choose The Right Wedding
Content Creator 6 Top Tips

With the recent huge explosion in the amount of businesses being set up to offer wedding content creation, it might be difficult to choose one that suits what you want, these tips might help.

1. Experience and Portfolio

When selecting a wedding content creator, review their previous work thoroughly. A strong portfolio showcasing weddings similar to your vision is a good indicator of their expertise. When choosing a wedding vendor we normally wouldn’t recommend basing your decision only on what you see on social media as social media posts are often highly curated to appeal to potential clients. However when it comes to finding a content creator, their job is to produce engaging social media content so that is definitely where you should look.

2. Style and Aesthetic

Every content creator has a unique and distinct approach. Some will focus on cinematic-style edits, while others may create fun, upbeat, and fast-paced videos that capture lively moments. It is essential to ensure that their individual style aligns harmoniously with your expectations and vision.

3. Social Media Savviness

Since wedding content creators specialise in digital platforms, choose someone who understands trending formats, viral-worthy content, and engagement-driven storytelling. While we would usually suggest not putting too much faith on the amount of likes and followers on social media when it comes to choosing a wedding vendor, this is exactly what you should be looking for when it comes to finding a content creator.

4. Reviews and Testimonials

Check online reviews and ask for client testimonials. A reputable wedding content creator will have positive feedback and happy couples vouching for their work. The amount of reviews you can find should also give you an idea of their experience level.

5. Ask Other Vendors About Their Experience Of Working With Them

It is likely that the people who will have seen the content creator you are considering working the most, are other wedding vendors. Most vendors will be happy to tell you about good and bad experiences they have had, if asked.

6. Wedding Content Creation Packages and Pricing

Content creation services vary in pricing depending on factors like hours of coverage, deliverables, and post-production edits. Request a breakdown of costs to ensure transparency and no hidden costs.

Will Content Creators At Weddings Become
the New Normal?

Since our very first wedding in 2014 we have photographed hundreds of weddings and during that time we have seen lots of different trends appear and disappear and it’s always difficult to know which one’s will be around for the long term, that is just the nature of the wedding industry. When it comes to content creators at weddings we can see the appeal but we think their needs to be a massive improvement both in the quality of work that is provided to brides and groom’s and in the level of professionalism shown by content creators on wedding days for them to become more than a passing fad.

In America where wedding content creation has been around for a lot longer than here, their is already some serious bite back from other vendors who have had a poor experience. It has surprisingly become quite common for photographers, videographers and even some other types of vendors to not accept bookings from clients if they are wanting to also book a content creator. Many are also including clauses in their contracts that say that they accept no responsibility for not being able to provide what they normally would due to issues caused specifically by content creators. We seen some posts recently on social media that suggest the same thing is also already happening here as well. We have never seen that before with any other type of wedding vendor.

For us personally we would never say to one of our couples that you should not book a service they want for their wedding. We are there to document their wedding, create some beautiful moments for them and to provide a record of the day they got married, not to interfere with the other ways they want to record their big day. However we would ask that anyone that books us to photograph their wedding ensures that if they are also booking a wedding content creator they make sure that the person they book, will not interfere with our ability to do our job. This is actually written into our wedding photography contract as an exclusivity clause, and we can not accept any responsibility for issues caused by another wedding vendor.

We hope that in the future content creators become more technically capable when it comes to using their devices, you can create good quality video on a phone if it is only being viewed on a phone screen when you understand how to find the best quality light. We also hope that they grow to understand that they do not need to follow the photographer and videographer around all day. They have the opportunity to go and document behind the scenes stuff that a photographer and videographer won’t necessarily always see when they are working, like the commercial content creators do. While the photographers and videographers are working with the couple they could for example go and mingle with the guests. Their are lots of opportunities at a wedding to capture stuff that is different from what the photographer and videographer are doing, they don’t need to replicate what we do.

It would be great to see some of the people that do such amazing work for commercial content creation at weddings. Most of them at the very least have experience of creating content for a client rather than just for themselves. They also have a better understanding of what it is like to work with professional photographers and videographers.

Tommy + Laurene