Wedding delivery
How wedding videographers deliver videos to clients.
One link per film, still playing in ten years.
A wedding is not a file transfer. It is four films, two people, both sets of parents, a group chat, and a request that turns up again two years later. This is the delivery workflow of a working wedding shop: what the couple gets, what the parents get, what happens when someone asks for the file again, and what a full season costs to keep online.
Video hosting for filmmakers · 5 GB free · Paid plans from USD 9/month
By uncompressed.io · Updated September 2026
The handoff
A wedding delivery is four films,
not one file.
The couple wants the highlight film tonight and the ceremony in full eventually. The parents want something they can open on a tablet. Someone will ask for the speeches. Design the delivery around that set, not around whichever transfer tool was open when you finished the export.
The highlight film
The one that gets watched and shared. Export it in H.264 for the broadest device compatibility, at whatever bitrate the picture needs. The player streams the exact bytes you uploaded, with no transcode anywhere, so the file the couple plays is the file you graded.
The feature edit
Twenty to thirty minutes, watched once properly and then revisited on anniversaries. Same treatment. HEVC and AV1 also stream in a browser, but decode depends on the device, which is why H.264 remains the safe default for a delivery that has to open on every phone in the family.
The full ceremony and the full reception
Long, rarely opened, and the two files a couple will ask for years later. They belong in the library, not in an inbox. These are also the two that eventually earn their way into cold storage.
The original files
A download switch per film. Leave it off while a cut is in review, turn it on at delivery. What it hands over is the file you uploaded. ProRes and DNxHR masters can be hosted for download this way, but they do not stream in a browser, so they are never the file being clicked.
One link per film, and the link stays valid because it points at a library rather than at a transfer that is counting down. That is the whole difference between a delivery and a send. The general version of this workflow is in deliver final video files to clients; this page is the wedding-specific arithmetic.
5 GB
Free to start
The Starter plan is free: 5 GB of hot storage, one film at a time.
0
Metered bandwidth
Plans have storage, seat and caption allowances; streaming has no extra charge. Views, uploads and viewers are unlimited on every plan, including free.
3 days
A WeTransfer transfer
On Free and Starter, uploads can be kept online for up to 3 days, counted from the moment the transfer is sent.
25 MB
Gmail attachment limit
Past that, Gmail removes the attachment and adds it as a Drive link instead.
The link itself
What each route can promise,
and what nobody will tell you.
Every tool below is good at the job it was built for. The table states only what each vendor publishes on a page we could read. Where a vendor documents nothing about playback quality, that is what the cell says, because guessing on a client’s behalf is how a wedding film ends up looking worse than the export.
Vendor figures come from the vendor's own pages: WeTransfer plan limits (article updated 30 May 2026) and transfer availability (updated 29 May 2026), Gmail attachment limits, Google Drive file limits, Google Workspace upload limits and Dropbox upload limitations, all fetched 11 September 2026. No WeTransfer price is published on a page that loaded, so none appears here. Cells reading not documented mean exactly that: the vendor does not publish the figure, and this page will not invent one.
Read the Gmail column plainly. Any wedding deliverable worth sending was never going to be an email attachment, and Gmail already solves that for you by substituting a Drive link. The problem was never the 25 MB. The problem is that the substitution turns your delivery into a file in a folder, and a file in a folder is something the couple has to manage.
Read the WeTransfer column just as plainly. For getting one batch of files to a second shooter or a colourist who will download it this afternoon, it is the right tool and you should keep using it. The 3-day window is a feature of a send-and-forget product, not a defect. It is simply the wrong shape for something a couple will want to open on their first anniversary. The full comparison of transfer routes is in sending large video files without quality loss.
The arithmetic
A season of weddings,
and what it costs to keep it playing.
Four delivered files per wedding, kept online so that every link a couple was ever sent still works. That is a library that grows by a fixed amount every season and never shrinks on its own. Here is what it holds and what it bills, at three shop sizes, before and after the one habit that changes the curve.
Per wedding, four delivered files: a 5-minute highlight at 100 Mbps (4 GB), a 25-minute feature edit at 100 Mbps (19 GB), a 45-minute ceremony cut at 50 Mbps (17 GB) and a 60-minute reception cut at 50 Mbps (23 GB). That is 63 GB a wedding, of which 23 GB is the highlight and the feature edit. Plan rates: Pro $25 a month with 500 GB hot, Max $75 with 1.5 TB hot plus 1 TB cold and 3 seats, Studio $250 with 2 TB hot plus 2 TB cold and 5 seats. Blocks past the plan are $40 per TB hot and $20 per TB cold a month, billed in whole terabytes. The archive examples use Max, which includes archive storage; paid Lite and Pro accounts can instead buy archive blocks. Camera originals are not in these figures: they stay on your own disks and RAID. Scale every number to your own export bitrates and running times.
Two things worth saying out loud about that table. The first is that blocks, not tiers, do most of the work: a hot-only shop is usually cheapest on Pro with blocks stacked on top, because a block costs the same whichever plan it sits on. The tier you pay for buys cold storage and seats, and nothing else on this page needs either until the archive habit starts.
The second is that the archive habit is the only lever with a growing return. Moving the ceremony and reception cuts to cold after a year takes roughly two thirds of every wedding out of the hot pool at half the rate, and the saving compounds with every season you shoot, because the hot side stops growing while the cold side grows at half price. The trade is real and it is not free: a cold film does not stream, embed or open in the review room until it is brought back, so the two long cuts become a request you fulfil rather than a link that plays instantly. That is the right trade for the two files nobody has opened in a year, and the wrong one for the highlight film. The full temperature model is in hot vs cold storage for footage.
Two years later
When the email arrives
and the link is old.
This is the request that decides whether your delivery workflow was any good. It always comes from an address you half remember, about a wedding you shot before you changed your export settings, and it is usually the ceremony.
Find the film, not the transfer
Everything you delivered is still in one library, searchable by couple. There is no expired transfer to recreate, no drive to find, no re-upload of a file you already paid to store.
Check its temperature
If the film is still hot, you are done: the link they were originally sent plays. If it went cold at the twelve-month mark, it needs to come back before it will stream.
Bring it back
Re-hydration is included, within an allowance of twice your cold pool each calendar month, resetting on the 1st. Restores are size-verified, so what comes back is byte for byte what went in.
Turn on the download if they want the file
A couple asking for the ceremony to edit into an anniversary reel wants the file, not a stream. Flip the per-film download on, and what they get is the file you uploaded, not a re-encode of it.
What this workflow does not do
Everyone else
The parents,
the group chat, the algorithm.
A wedding film has three audiences with three different needs, and only one of them is the client. Sending all three the same thing is how a delivery either leaks or underperforms.
The couple
Every film, the download switch on where you agreed to hand over originals, and a password on anything they asked to keep private. They are the only audience whose access you should think about individually.
The family
The same link, forwarded. Views and viewers are unlimited on every plan, and no bandwidth is metered, so a film that circulates through two extended families costs exactly the same as one nobody opens. Plans have storage, seat and caption allowances; streaming has no extra charge, and there is no per-view charge to budget for.
The public
If the goal is reach, a teaser on a public platform is the right answer and this page will not pretend otherwise. YouTube exists for exactly that job. Send the reach cut there and keep the delivery links for the people who paid you.
The same distinction runs through your own marketing. The films you show prospective couples are a portfolio, with different requirements from a client delivery: they need to look right on a slow connection on a phone, from a page you control. That is a separate build, covered in video portfolio hosting for filmmakers.
One last honest note on scale. If you shoot four weddings a year and your couples download the film the week you send it, none of this arithmetic is worth your attention: keep using the transfer tool you already have, and spend the money on a second card reader. The workflow on this page starts paying for itself somewhere around the point where old links get clicked more often than new ones, which for most shops is season two.
Questions
Frequently asked
How do wedding videographers usually deliver videos to clients?
Most shops still send a transfer link, a shared drive folder, or a drive in the post. A transfer link is built to move a file once and then expire. A drive folder is built to hold a file, not to play it. The workflow on this page keeps the film in a library instead: one link per film, playing at the bitrate you exported, with the original file behind a download switch you control.
Should I send the wedding film through WeTransfer?
For a one-off handoff to someone who will download it the same day, it is the lowest-friction tool there is and you should keep using it. It is not a delivery destination for a wedding. On the Free and Starter plans, uploads can be kept online for up to 3 days, counted from the exact moment the transfer is sent, and Free is capped at 10 transfers or 3 GB in any rolling 30-day window. A couple who opens the email on their honeymoon finds nothing.
Can the couple download the original file?
Yes, when you turn the download on for that film. The download hands over the file you uploaded, not a re-encode. Leave it off while a cut is still in review and turn it on at delivery, or leave it off entirely and keep the link as the viewing copy.
What do the parents get?
The same link. Views, uploads and viewers are unlimited on every plan, including the free one, and no bandwidth is metered, so a film passed around a family group chat costs the same as a film nobody opens. Plans have storage, seat and caption allowances; streaming has no extra charge.
The couple asks for the ceremony cut two years later. What happens?
If the film is still in hot storage, nothing: the link they already have plays. If you archived it to cold storage, it has to be re-hydrated first, because a cold file does not stream, embed or open in the review room until it comes back. Re-hydration is included, within an allowance of twice your cold pool per calendar month.
Do I need a password on a wedding film?
Sometimes. A password can be set per video, which covers the real case: a ceremony the couple does not want circulating while a highlight film is public. There is no single password-protected hub holding all four films together, so a set of four films is a set of four links, each with its own setting.
Keep every wedding playing
Upload one finished film, share the link with one couple, and watch what a phone actually plays. Plans have storage, seat and caption allowances; streaming has no extra charge, so views, viewers and re-shares cost nothing. Choose a plan when a season of work needs the room.
Sources
- 1.uncompressed.io pricing: plans, included storage and storage blocks
- 2.uncompressed.io plans: included storage and seats
- 3.WeTransfer Help Center: Plan limits (article Updated 30 May 2026, fetched 11 September 2026)
- 4.WeTransfer Help Center: How long are transfers available to download? (article Updated 29 May 2026, fetched 11 September 2026)
- 5.Google Help: Send attachments with your Gmail message (25 MB limit, automatic Drive link) (fetched 11 September 2026)
- 6.Google Help: Files you can store in Google Drive (5 TB per file) (fetched 11 September 2026)
- 7.Google Workspace: Storage and upload limits (750 GB per user per 24 hours) (fetched 11 September 2026)
- 8.Dropbox Help: Upload limitations (2 TB maximum file size, 375 GB browser caveat) (fetched 11 September 2026)