By Keven Goh

Introduction

Your wedding is one of the most important events of your life. Getting married to the love of your life, being surrounded by friends and family, celebrating your special union together— it only makes sense that you’d want to collect and preserve as many of those memories as possible. Of course you’d want to hire a wedding photographer for the main event, but what about all the other moments throughout the ceremony that you want to preserve for years to come? 

The good news is that almost everyone owns some form of smartphone. Whether your guests prefer iPhone or Android, many modern phones have cameras that effortlessly rival the quality of a professional lens. There’s no doubt that many of your guests will be taking plenty of pictures throughout your wedding day— whether you ask them to or not!  

However, then comes the question of how to consolidate and preserve the many different photos taken across all your guests’ various devices. While it may seem like a challenge, there are many ways to efficiently collect and share these memories. In this article, we’ll cover some of the best ways to collect photos from your wedding guests and the best ways for your guests to share photos. 

Instagram

Instagram’s Direct Messaging service is optimized for group communications, making it simple and easy to add all of your guests to a single group chat where all the wedding photos can be posted and shared. Members of each group chat are able to react to photos with emojis or messages, as well as communicating directly with each other to coordinate which photos they want to share.You can even use Instagram’s hashtag feature to tag all your photos across multiple users. If you decide to use Instagram, you may already follow or be followed by many of your wedding guests— simply create a group chat with all of your guests before your wedding so that everyone knows where to share their photos on the big day. While Instagram has many positives in terms of ease of use and communication abilities, however, it’s important to note that photo quality may be decreased when using their messaging services. Furthermore, Instagram is generally less popular among the elderly, so you’ll have to keep in mind that grandma might not have an account. 

Google Photos

Google Photos is another great option for collecting wedding photos from your guests. The service is free to use, and requires only a working Gmail account to activate. Google Photos can host large amounts of photos while preserving the original image quality, and Google’s built-in AI features can provide instant and automatic photo organization. With a few settings, you can set it to automatically recognize and sort different faces, objects, or even activities. Simply create a shared album within the app and make sure that your guests can all access it— you can either do this by inviting them manually from the app itself, which prompts an email notification for each recipient, or you can simply include a link on your digital wedding invitations. If you choose to go with Google Photos, however, note that the free version only comes with 15 gigabytes of storage space. Depending on the amount of guests at your wedding and how many photos you anticipate to be taken, it may be worth considering the upgrade to a Pro subscription, which grants you 2 terabytes of storage for $120 a year.

Provide Disposable Cameras

Providing disposable film cameras at your wedding is a fun, nostalgic alternative to using smartphones for taking photos. Not only does it create an engaging activity for your guests, you only need to collect each camera at the end of your wedding to have the film developed— no group chats, folders, or online coordination needed. To streamline the process, consider making cameras available at each table during the reception, and providing a collection bin at the exit for your guests to deposit their cameras in as they leave. However, this method also means that you’ll have to find a way to share your wedding photos with guests after having them developed, in which case Google and Instagram are both still great options. It’s also more expensive, and requires more manual labor.

Try GuestSnap!

GuestSnap is a new and innovative way to collect and share wedding photos with your guests. It works by providing a unique QR code linked specifically to your wedding. There’s no signup, login, or app download needed— all your guests need to do is simply scan the QR code to access a private shared photo album where they can upload any photos taken during your wedding. Photos uploaded to the shared album are visible by all members of the wedding, whether a guest or you and your soon-to-be spouse. To make sure your GuestSnap QR code is easily accessible, consider having it available at the venue entrance or placing copies with each table at the reception. You can also include it directly in the invitation with one of GuestSnap’s free digital templates!