Believe it or not, content creators weren’t a thing a couple of years ago, especially not in weddings. In 2025, they’re everywhere, causing a delightful splash on the wedding scene and providing a sought-after service for modern couples excited to share their day online. I’ve met some fabulous content creators, and spoken to wedding photographers who love working alongside them.

But the rise of wedding content creators has instigated some interesting discussions online: from a tiny minority who’ve caused problems for wedding photographers (because this has been a learning curve for everyone!) to established pros wondering if wedding photography has a future at all. (It does!) At this point I had to step up and explain why you still need a wedding photographer, even if you’ve booked a content creator to capture your wedding.

1. Future proof your wedding

My inbox is currently flooded with articles about Gen Z trends: vintage wedding aesthetics, super low budgets, and a backlash against social media. Now, I believe social media will stick around: TikTok, Instagram and Facebook are too established to disappear from our lives. They’ll be here for a long time, and so, happily, will wedding content creators! But social sharing evolves at breakneck speed, so these platforms will be unrecognisable in five or ten years’ time. Wedding content created especially for these platforms might be completely unusable by your tenth anniversary.

On the other hand, your printed wedding album – even your professional wedding photographer’s high resolution digital images – are designed to be everlasting: they’re not intended only for the weeks after your wedding, but for your family to enjoy for decades or even generations to come.

2. Experience and quality

Content creators are still a New Thing. That makes them exciting, and unique, and a wonderful aspect of any modern wedding. However: you won’t find a wedding content creator who’s been doing this 5 years or more.  And experience really matters, for a bunch of reasons I’m about to go into. (Keep reading!)

Finding a wedding photographer who’s built up a fabulous reputation in your local area over five or ten years will be comparatively easy. They’ll know your venue, your florist, and have good relationships with your other suppliers. Plus, they’ll have a ton of experience not just working at weddings, but creating a brilliant business that gives you a smooth, stress-free, seamless experience from the moment you reach out to them, to the wedding itself, and beyond.

3. Backups, systems and processes

These all come with experience, and a wedding photographer with experience will have every eventuality covered. They’ll carry spare camera bodies in case one fails (or two!), multiple lenses, and memory cards for multiple backups. They’ll back up your images to the cloud straight after your wedding. Basically, they will do EVERYTHING to make sure your wedding pics would survive the apocalypse.

I’d expect a wedding content creator to have one backup smartphone at the very least, plus chargers, cloud backups for images and more. But I’d be very surprised if any have your images and videos covered to the extent an experienced photographer will.

As for systems, a photographer with previous experience will work to a routine that satisfies and exceeds client expectations. They’ll know how important great communication is; they’ll explain how they work, they’ll meet you beforehand and get to know you, recce your venue if they need to, and make sure you have everything you need to feel confident in their services on the day. Some photographers will find out who your key people are on the day; others might have a shot list, or a little questionnaire about your day to help get to know you better. They’ll keep in touch, and be ready to answer questions in a friendly, helpful way. This will all feel really personal, and natural, but it’s a carefully honed process because good photographers know an awful lot about weddings including those pre-wedding nerves, and how reassuring it can be to stay in contact and know everything you need to, without you having to ask.

This is purely the result of experience, and a content creator may not have the same level of experience. BUT – let’s be honest, neither do most of us planning our weddings! Wedding planning is generally new to everyone – and all I’m saying is that hiring experienced suppliers can help avoid any wedding anxiety. You’ll get to know your content creator, and someone who’s super excited about your wedding and 100% invested in their fledgling business can be utterly brilliant as a part of your day!

4. Editing your wedding images!

So, editing of images means different things to different people, even photographers. I’m a wedding blogger, so I see a ton of wedding photos, but I’ll never claim to be an expert on photography. For couples who aren’t massively into photography the concept of editing can be a bit fuzzy. I’ve known wedding photographers who’ll painstakingly edit out every glaring green fire exit sign from galleries, and I’ve even published weddings where I know the photographer had to blur out nipples that were taking centre stage from overly revealing bridesmaid dresses. With most photographers taking a couple of thousand images at each wedding, then carefully sifting through to ‘cull’ those with people blinking or talking at the wrong moment, editing images is a huge part of a wedding photographer’s work.

Editing a gallery of wedding images can take weeks or months. It’s not about airbrushing spots and making your skin look flawless in every image. It’s often about consistency or continuity: getting the light just right and making sure the images and lighting work throughout your wedding photos as a storyline. Things like skin tone, cropping, editing out distractions (people wandering into the background of your portrait photos for example!) and making sure horizons are on point can all take time. Even the best pro wedding photographers won’t get every detail perfect in camera; editing is important so you can have amazing, lasting images of your wedding.

For a wedding content creator working at speed, there’s less opportunity to edit, so your images will be perfectly imperfect. This is real skill and I admire their talent in a completely different way to that of wedding photographers. Creating quality content at speed is  a wonderful thing in itself: we live in an age where life is captured on screen and very much in the moment – the lack of any significant post-processing (ie editing) is just something to be aware of when working with a wedding content creator.

5. The future of digital image formats

If you only hire a wedding content creator, you’ll get videos and images which are perfectly screen-sized for current devices.

Hiring both a photographer and a content creator will mean you have variously sized images and video, including all of your professional images which can be printed at super high quality for a timeless wedding album and for years to come.

Without these, where would your wedding memories be in ten, twenty or fifty years’ time? For context, I’ll admit I’m well past the age of thirty, and even old enough to remember the first mobile phones. So they weren’t smartphones: the first Nokia I remember had a screen about the size of a modern first class stamp (do people still use those?!), and just about big enough for a game of Snake in about 36 pixels. My convoluted (but, I think charming,) point is that technology changes so fast, and social media will change so fast, that no one can guarantee we’ll even be able to read jpeg files and mp4 videos as another decade or two go by, let alone share them.

6. Your 70-year-old self will love you for it

… and having hinted at my own great age, now it’s safe to introduce the reason photographers NEVER mention for hiring a great wedding photographer: people die.

(I’m not going to tiptoe around this one: you need to understand 100% why your wedding photos will mean EVERYTHING to you in years to come.) Not everyone will be around for ever. We all lose grandparents, parents, even best friends and siblings at some point in our lives.

I’m not here to break hearts or make you sad: I only want to make you aware that as a seventy-year old it’s really unlikely your parents will still be around. Some of us lose them earlier, along with other people who mean the world to us. And every visual memory becomes a thousand times more important as we try to hold on.

The best photos you’ll ever have of those amazing people in your life, and of you together, are likely to be from your wedding photographer. If you hire a photographer and videographer (again, for the best quality moving images you can get) you’ll be able to see their smiles, and hear their voices, even show them to your family, many years into the future.

Hiring a content creator is all about reliving your wedding ‘in the moment’. Hiring a photographer means more images, and more great images of the people you love. And if you choose a documentary wedding photographer, those authentic, natural, candid images of your guests will be the ones you hold on to with everything you’ve got, when you need them most.

7. A note on “candid” and natural photography

This blows my mind: ChatGPT told me that one benefit of having both a content creator and a photographer to capture your wedding is that a content creator will capture the raw, candid moments, while a photographer’s images will be timeless and polished.

Reading content creators’ bios and ‘about’ pages often brought up the same thing: that content creators will capture those unposed, candid moments a photographer won’t. And – meaning no offence to content creators at all – I’m calling bullshit on this one. Choose your wedding photographer well, and they will capture candid photography above and beyond anything a content creator can do. I’m incredibly proud to have some of the very best documentary wedding photographers in the country as English Wedding members. Their ethos is all about capturing those little moments you’ll miss: interactions between guests, the smudge of a little happy tear your dad thought no one had noticed!

I think what content creators capture so beautifully is the spirit and movement of your wedding, the atmosphere and the joy so you can relive it in the days and weeks after your day. But to imply that wedding photographers won’t capture the raw, candid moments of your wedding – that’s just silly.

If you’re hiring a more traditional wedding photographer, or someone whose style is more editorial or fashion-led – ie someone who doesn’t specialise in candid or documentary images, then they will make an amazing team along with your wedding content creator. If you’re looking for beautifully posed moments, and stylish images of your wedding, then a content creator + editorial / fashion style wedding photographer combo will be perfect!

(If you’re not a fan of posing for images, or you’re a bit nervous about taking time away from your guests on your wedding day, then documentary wedding photography is for you.)

8. Wedding content creators excel at…

Speed. The turnaround of your videos and images is a major selling point, with most of those listed on Hitched’s 20 UK content creators promising delivery of your wedding content within 24 or 48 hours. This is impressive and I can’t even begin to imagine how hard these creatives are working to deliver such an amazing service.

Sharing a different perspective of your wedding. I loved reading an article by Lauren May Photos, talking about content creators being a way of “enriching the narrative of your wedding day” and telling its story from the perspective of a guest – which, seen the day after your wedding, is going to be pretty damn special.

“content creators capture the day’s natural flow, documenting candid, heartfelt moments with minimal equipment—often just an iPhone. These clips feel like a modern-day home movie, preserving the unscripted essence of the wedding” ~ wedding content creator Hope Gracie on English Wedding

5 essential tips for hiring a wedding content creator and wedding photographer / videographer

1. Let everyone know who they’ll be working alongside. Happy photographers, videographers and content creators are the ones who have time to connect beforehand, and are happy to work together.
2. Find a content creator with some experience – one who’s known and respected locally, with an existing relationship with other suppliers. Again, your photographer and videographer are key, but also your hair and make up artists and venue coordinator will appreciate working alongside someone they know.
3. Look for reviews. Find a content creator who can blend into the background just as a wedding photographer will: capturing candid moments only works if guests don’t know you’re doing it!
4. Tell your guests! Avoid any confusion where your guests might be wondering, “who’s the guest with the iPhone?” – some great advice via Rock n Roll Bride
5. Sign contracts. Your content creator’s contract should be as watertight as your photographer’s. They’re providing a really important service, you’re depending on them – so the specifics should all be agreed in writing. Some good advice (and words of warning) on this blog post.

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Featured image credit: Spinaker Photography (from the English Wedding archives here)