Short answer: your main film should be three to eight minutes, backed by full-length edits of your ceremony and speeches. That combination - one short film you'll rewatch constantly, plus complete records you'll treasure - is what experience across the industry has settled on. Here's why.
The quick answer by film type
Highlights film: 3-8 minutes (sweet spot 5-7). Teaser for social: 60-90 seconds. Full ceremony edit: as long as your ceremony - typically 20-40 minutes, uncut. Full speeches edit: complete, typically 20-45 minutes. Feature/documentary edit: 20-60 minutes, chronological.
A complete professional delivery usually means the highlights film plus the full ceremony and speeches - around an hour of total footage, of which the short film is the one you'll rewatch for the rest of your lives.
The highlights film: 3-8 minutes
This is the film you'll actually watch - on anniversaries, on rough days, on your phone showing colleagues. It's short enough to feel every second and long enough to carry the whole arc of the day: morning nerves, the vows, the speeches' best lines, the dance floor.
Under three minutes and it becomes a trailer - beautiful but weightless. Past ten and even the couple's attention drifts; I've seen it happen at viewing after viewing. The sweet spot sits around five to seven minutes, cut to the emotional beats of your specific day rather than a template.
The full edits: every word, kept safe
The highlights film is for rewatching; the full ceremony and speech edits are for keeping. Your complete vows. Every speech, start to finish. These aren't films you'll play monthly - they're the recordings that become priceless in ten, twenty, fifty years, when the voices in them matter more than ever.
This is the part couples underrate when booking and treasure most later. Whatever package you choose, make sure full ceremony and speeches are in it - it's why they're included in everything I offer.
What about feature-length films?
Some filmmakers offer 20-60 minute chronological edits of the whole day. They're lovely if you know you're the kind of couple who'll sit down and watch a long-form film - but be honest with yourselves. Most couples watch it once. The highlights film gets watched a hundred times.
If budget forces a choice, choose the better short film over the longer everything. Density of feeling beats duration every time.
Want to see what these lengths feel like in practice? Watch my films - every one is a real wedding, and the running times are chosen for that couple's day, not a formula.