When it comes to commercial productions, it is essential to record top-rate sound. The wedding speaches are actually easy-peasy it's the church service and singing which sorts out the men from the boys. As a wedding videographer you should be looking at spending at least £2,000 on your sound gear. That would consist of a couple of Sennheiser G2 radio-mic systems and a decent microphone (such as an MKH60, CMIT5U, KMR81 or an AT815ST if you're not to sure about stereo recording).
Ouch!
For a "bog standard" long table set-up, I would use a cardiod microphone (like the Sennheiser MKH40 at about a grand. this is as well as your "general purpose" microphone) on a stand for the best result, depending on the circumstances. Getting the best sound out of your equipment is a skill which you can only really aquire by trial and error.
Sennheiser do a "K6" series of cheaper microphones which will certainly cut down the cost (less than half the price of their professional series) and I've used the AKG "blueline" series with excellent results. It is very much a "weakest-link" scenario though. If you don't know what you're doing, the cheap mics will sound bloody awful.
I can recommend "Sound for Digital Video" by Tomlinson Holman as an excellent book for grasping the basics of... well.. sound for digital video. I really would suggest going to your local rental house, renting a few microphones and experimenting before inflicting yourself on a paying customer.
Failing that "Digital Diretor" might be running a residental videography course this summer at about £1k ... interested?
 | 
Linear Mode
