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    • More and more couples are hiring wedding content creators
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    More and more couples are hiring wedding content creators

    Vaseline Posted on

    Erin McCarthy
    | Philadelphia Inquirer

    Philadelphia — While Bayley Shanley was in the car on the way home from her wedding, she got a notification on her phone from one of her vendors.

    As her new husband drove, Shanley flipped through more than 500 candid photos and videos.

    She watched her bridesmaids walk down the aisle, a moment she had missed, and relived the speeches. She sent her bridesmaid’s mother photos of the child helping the bride put on her shoes.

    The footage was captured by Taylor Moy, a South Philadelphia wedding content creator who was hired to capture behind-the-scenes moments from the couple’s June wedding at the Hotel Du Pont in Wilmington. Unlike professional wedding photography and videography, which are higher-quality and require weeks of editing, wedding content creators can often turn around their work in 24 hours or less.

    “It felt so good to have it right away,” said Shanley, a 27-year-old accountant from Bethesda, Maryland. “I didn’t have to ask anyone for a photo. I sent her Dropbox (virtual folder of photos and videos) to everyone ahead of time,” including friends who couldn’t make the wedding.

    And compared to other wedding costs, it was a bargain: The couple paid about $700 to have Moy document their wedding day and rehearsal dinner, compared to the $5,000 they paid for professional photography and the $2,500 to $8,000 they were quoted for professional videography.

    “The price is just unbeatable,” Shanley said.

    Wedding content creation is a relatively new aspect of the wedding industry. It has become popular across the US over the past two years and has recently become available in the Philadelphia market.

    San Le, 30, of Old City, recalled that when she was planning her March 2023 wedding, she couldn’t find a local wedding content creator; the closest ones were in New York. Since then, Le, a data analyst by day, and a handful of others have picked up the gig in the Philadelphia area and turned it into a full- or part-time business taking hundreds of photos and videos, mostly on their iPhones, at weddings and other events. Most wedding content creators also offer short, edited videos that clients can post to Instagram or TikTok in a matter of days.

    “The vibe I always try to create is your uncle in the ’90s with a camcorder, but modernized,” says Isabella Gagliardi, a wedding content creator in New Jersey. The 27-year-old explains her work for older generations as “not much different than their homemade wedding video.”

    “I don’t necessarily capture the ‘1, 2, 3 smile’ clips,” said Marjorie Raimo, a 29-year-old Wallingford resident and owner of Behind The Scenes Bridal. “Most of it is unposed.”

    The Inquirer spoke with five local content creators, who collectively have covered more than 100 weddings in the past year. For their on-day services, they charge between $500 and $2,000, depending on how many hours of coverage, photos and edited video clients want. Demand is growing, the creators say, with dozens of couples already booked for 2025.

    Content creators stress that they are not a replacement for professional photographers and videographers. So far, all of their couples have also hired a photographer, they said, and about half of them have had a videographer as well.

    “I actually won’t work a wedding where there’s not a professional photographer,” Gagliardi said. “They’re exponentially more expensive than me and probably more important in the grand scheme of things.”

    Let guests ‘live in the moment’ — and ‘post in the morning’

    While wedding content creation stems from Gen Z and millennials’ obsession with social media, creators say their clients aren’t just interested in the number of likes and views their wedding content gets on Instagram or TikTok.

    Some wedding content creators cater to couples who want their big day to go viral — sometimes even posting in real time from their clients’ accounts. But Philadelphia-area vendors said few of their couples are opting for that.

    “That’s just not something I’ve done. I would be open to doing that,” said Raimo, a full-time wedding content creator who has photographed 23 weddings so far this year. But “I think there’s something special about being in the moment, about just keeping it to yourself for a little while.”

    She said that she and most of her clients are of the mindset of, “Can we just do this now and post it in the morning?”

    Le, owner of Vivid Moments with San, says her clients typically aren’t interested in recreating trendy TikToks for weddings and don’t care how many people, beyond their close friends and family, see the content.

    “Most people just want to have those moments for themselves so they can relive them the next day,” she said.

    According to local wedding content creators, the biggest draw for clients is the quick turnaround time and the pressure it takes away from guests to capture every moment.

    “Everyone wants to share everything, but we also put a lot of emphasis on living in the here and now,” says Claire Vance, owner of Scorpio Media.

    A wedding content creator “lets everyone enjoy the reception,” said Gagliardi, a full-time creator at Wandering Stardust Collective. “You don’t have to worry about leaving your phone on the table. I get it.”

    For the couple the next day, she added, “it eliminates all that ‘Who has this video? Does anybody have this?'”

    And while a content creator’s iPhone photos may be lower quality than professional photos, they’re often better than the crowdsourced photos couples typically look at the next day.

    “Do you really want the blurry photo of your great uncle with her thumb on it?” said Vance, 25, from Limerick. “Probably not.”

    Creating wedding content isn’t just for the day itself, though: Philadelphia-based creators say they’ve also captured engagements, baby showers, rehearsal dinners, and even bachelorette parties.

    Vance spent the Fourth of July weekend in Avalon documenting her first bachelorette party, a celebration for 26-year-old Gabrielle Vagnozzi. It was the first time Vance had created content for a bachelorette party, and she charged about $900, a bill that was paid by Vagnozzi’s maid of honor.

    Of other bachelor parties Vagnozzi has attended, “everyone’s taking pictures, and then everyone wants to look at the pictures, and we don’t have anyone taking pictures of all of us. It’s annoying,” said Vagnozzi, a Collegeville native who now lives in Virginia Beach. “It takes away from the moment.”

    Vagnozzi knew she wanted a content creator for her own bachelorette party, so she and her friends could be more present without the stress of capturing every moment.

    “This generation — and I’m so guilty of it — we just always care about pictures,” said Vagnozzi, a sales rep. “I didn’t want to worry about that. I just wanted to be with my 13 girlfriends that I was lucky enough to have all in the room.”

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