A Real SA Wedding Budget Breakdown (And Where the Film Fits)

Venue and catering eat the biggest slice of almost every South African wedding budget, usually more than half. The rest gets split across attire, flowers, music, photo and video.

A common rule of thumb is to put around 10 to 15 percent of your total budget into capturing the day, split between photo and video. On a R150,000 wedding that's roughly R15,000 to R22,000, which lines up neatly with where our collections sit.

The trap is treating photo and video as an afterthought once everything else is paid for. In five years the flowers are long gone and the food is a memory. The film and the photos are the only things you actually keep.

Our advice: decide what you want captured before you fall in love with a venue that takes the whole budget. Lock the film and photo early, then build the rest of the day around the parts you'll relive forever.