Hi guys,

Well, I'm thinking of dipping my toe in the wedding videography waters, I have a good contact in the wedding photography business who might be able to push a few cients my way, and I have enough decent freebie weddings under my belt to put together a nice website with video clips. I'm only intending to do them on an occasional basis, which is just as well really because I've been told the bottom has pretty much fallen out of the weddig game, at least in my part of the UK.

Anyway, my silly newbie questions are:

1) Apart from registering a domain name and doing a website, do I need to register with anyone (e.g the taxman) that I am starting up a business from home, even if its a freelance outfit doing occasional work - like maybe 3 weddings a year at most?

2) As regards video editing hardware, is there much advantage in going for a dedicated PC rather than a high end laptop? Or are the graphics cards on laptops not up to scratch for this kind of work? I do a lot of After Effects work, and so I would be looking at maybe a 3Gb laptop with 256Mb ATI Graphics card, would that be good enough? (Considering that I am curently editing wedding videos with 512Mb RAM and 32Mb graphics!)

3) Would approaching wedding photography places and offering a deal on photo/video packages be a good idea or a terrible one? (I'm thinking, let the shop do the bookings with client and pay for my services at my standard rate, and then the shop takes a cut out of this and pays me, minus their commision for doing the booking. Does that make sense? OK, it means less money, but more bookings...)

You will need to complete a tax return at the end of the tax year to declare the income you earned during the year. This is your decleration of your earnings.

Depends on who you ask. and what format you record in. I love the flexibility of laptop editing, and with a very highly specced laptop, you can just about edit AVHCD. With a decent laptop you can edit HDV easily. You sound like you're a fellow laptop user, so I'd stick with that.

No idea is a terrible one, but a good idea can be terribly executed.

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I agree with Marc 100% on the external booking idea!! You will either have to work for less (bad idea) or overcharge the client (also bad idea) If you are getting bookings with a shop and giving them 30% and I come along and offer to give them 40%...who will they favour????

Seriously just have a decent website and register with a few well know wedding directories online to get you going. Here I can have a full page on a directorie's site for around $100 a year!! Once you are well known it will be word of mouth anyway..nothing sells better than a satisfied bride and remember all her friends are around the same age so that's a good resource for you!!

Chris