On TikTok and Instagram, wedding content is explosively popular and can lead to viral fame.
Now, entrepreneurial TikTokers are offering their services as professional wedding content creators.
They see it as a gap in the market that’s only going to grow in coming months.
Armed with nothing but an iPhone and a portable light, Taylor Richardson sets off for work.
As of June, Richardson’s job title has been “wedding content creator,” a professional charged with the task of documenting one of the most important days of a couple’s life. But unlike traditional wedding photograohers, her content isn’t destined for a family album — it will end up on social media.
Richardson set up her business earlier this year, filming short-form, personalized photo and video content of weddings specifically designed for a couple to post on platforms like TikTok and Instagram Reels.
Weddings are an explosively popular topic on social media, where it is common for couples to share their best pictures and videos from the day. On TikTok in particular, they often go viral in the process — the hashtag #weddingTikTok has 30 billion views on the app.
Wedding content creation is a very new concept — many creators have been setting up shop over the past few months and advertise mainly on TikTok and Instagram. The hashtag #weddingcontentcreator has 14.6 million TikTok views, with the vast majority of videos posted in the latter half of 2022.
Wedding content creators told Insider they want to fill a gap in the wedding market, allowing couples to avoid waiting weeks for professional photos which they then have to figure out how to make work for a completely different format.
They think their skills are only going to become more in demand, as more people realize the value of getting much social-media content as possible — and as quickly as possible — out of their wedding.
Richardson, 29, was inspired to start her business after getting engaged. Like many brides, she documented the steps leading up to her October wedding on TikTok, and as she got more involved in the genre, she felt there was “something missing” in the community, she told Insider.
“I was following other brides on TikTok that got married, and after the wedding day, they were always like, ‘I have to wait for my photos to get back to me,’ and they had nothing to post or share with us straight away,” she said.
Richardson, who is based in Salt Lake City, Utah, thought it would be a good idea to set up a business where she could film short videos and take pictures from a couple’s wedding day on her phone, which would be ready and available for couples to look through the next day itself.
She charges between $1,250 and $1,450 per wedding, depending on how long the couple wants her to be at the event — around half the average cost of a wedding photographer in the US, which was $2,500 in 2021, according to a survey by wedding planning service The Knot.
Richardson sees her role as different from that of a traditional photographer or videographer — instead of aiming for polished shots and editing clips together to produce a longer montage, she focuses on taking “raw footage” and “candid” images, which have a more “personal” and “organic” feel, she said.
“The results end up looking like I was attending the wedding myself, like an amazing friend who never put her phone down the entire day,” she told Insider.
Dapherlie Moungabio, 24, who set up her wedding content creation business in London, UK, in October, told Insider she thinks a big advantage of having a content creator at your wedding is that it “gives your bridesmaids a break,” so that if you want to post on social media during your wedding, you don’t have to force your friends to take all the photos.
A typical day on the job for Moungabio involves getting shots of the couple getting ready for the day and of guests at the reception, sending the files to the couple within 24 hours via Dropbox, or posting the content straight on the couple’s social media pages after gaining access to their accounts and agreeing on captions and the presentation of the post with the couple beforehand.
“It’s also about capturing the little details and fun things that are happening that the bride and groom might not necessarily see themselves,” she told Insider, adding, “I’m trying to show them how their day unfolded as if I was a guest at the wedding and these are the little things I’m seeing throughout the day.”
Moungabio, who has worked at two weddings since October, told Insider she thinks a lot of TikTokers will be “jumping on the bandwagon” and turning content creation into a business in the coming year.
She believes this is in part because there is a “low barrier to entry,” to the job compared to a traditional wedding photographer who would require more equipment and training, and predicts an increase in demand for TikTok-ready wedding content. She’s even been reaching out to influencers to offer her services.
“There are so many pages on Instagram and TikTok that share pictures from beautiful weddings. And I think for some couples it’s a goal to get onto those pages. Plus, people are always trying to make their wedding stand out, and having a content creator there could be a fun thing to do to achieve that,” she told Insider.
Richardson also told Insider she thinks wedding content creation could potentially “explode” in popularity next year because of how quickly couples can get the finished products sent to them.
“In this age, we’re all about electronics and being able to have everything at our fingertips. Not to say that nobody’s patient, but people truly want to see and share stuff. They don’t want to wait,” she said.
For more stories like this, check out coverage from Insider’s Digital Culture team here.
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