Collecting your guests' photos at your wedding
Your photographer goes home at eleven. Your guests stay, and they make the rest of the night. This guide is about getting those photos without a group chat full of squashed thumbnails.
the short answer
Put a card with a QR code on every table. Guests scan it with their camera, pick their photos and upload them to one album. They need no app and no account, and you get everything at full size instead of the compressed version out of WhatsApp.
Why do those photos disappear otherwise?
Not because your guests are unkind. Nobody is standing at the bar thinking about the couple waiting for their pictures. The photos stay where they were made, in a camera roll between shopping lists and screenshots.
The usual fixes only half work. A group chat delivers files of a few hundred kilobytes, too small to print. A shared folder works for whoever runs the same operating system and can still find the link. And a hashtag on social media collects exactly the photos somebody was willing to show strangers, which are rarely the best ones.
| how | effort for guests | what you end up with |
|---|---|---|
| Group chat | low | compressed, and scrolled away within a month |
| Shared cloud folder | high | full quality, but from very few people |
| Disposable cameras | low | 27 frames per table, half of them missed |
| QR code on the table | low | everything, full size, in one album |
Disposable cameras are in the table because people genuinely search for them. Whether they are still worth it depends on what you want to be left holding afterwards.
How do you set it up? Four steps
- Make a page for your dayA name and a date are enough. That gets the album ready and gives you your own web address, something like eventsnap.nl/e/sanne-lars.
- Print the cards and put them outEight to an A4, so ten tables takes two sheets. Do this well before the day: a print shop takes about two weeks. Put one at the coat check and one at the bar as well.
- Have somebody say it out loud onceTwo lines from your master of ceremonies before dinner roughly doubles the number of uploads. Something like: there is a card on every table, point your camera at it, put in whatever you take.
- Look the next day, not that nightThe best uploads arrive after midnight and the day after, when people go through their roll at home. So leave the album open for at least a week, not until Sunday.
Will older guests understand this?
This is the question couples ask most often, and the answer is shorter than you would think. Since roughly 2018 the camera app on every phone reads QR codes with nothing to install. Your guest points the camera at the card, taps the notification that appears, and is in. No app store, no password, no email address.
What does help: write "point your camera here" on the card rather than "scan the QR code". Same instruction, in words everyone already knows. And make sure one person per table has done it already, because the second person at a table is always easier than the first.
Pay once, and the album stays up for months
You build the page in five minutes and see a preview before you pay. No subscription, storage in the EU, and the photos stay at full size.
Who can see your photos?
Only whoever has the link or the card. The album is not in Google and there is no browsable page of other people's weddings. If you want it tighter, turn on approval: then you see every upload first and it only joins the album once you place it. That costs you a Sunday morning, and it is why you never get a surprise on the slideshow.
There is one more thing you can do: keep an album closed until a moment you choose. Some couples put their own photographer's pictures in an album that opens on Sunday afternoon, so guests get one more new thing after the party is already over. We call that the reveal, and there is a separate guide on keeping an album closed.
Does this replace your photographer?
No, and that is not the idea. A photographer stands in the right place at the right moment, knows what to do with backlight in a church, and delivers pictures you hang one of on a wall. What they cannot do is sit at nine tables at once and still be on the dance floor at half past one.
The two go together. From your photographer you get a few hundred photos that are good. From your guests you get a few hundred photos that exist, including the moment your uncle took the microphone and the look on your mother's face while he did. And because a photographer needs eight to ten weeks for their selection, this is also what you have to look back on in the meantime.
What couples ask us
Do guests have to install an app?
No. The QR code opens a web page in the browser that is already on the phone. No app store, no account, no password. A guest who wants to add photos later just opens the same link again.
Can guests upload video as well?
Yes. Alongside photos (JPG, PNG, WebP, AVIF, TIFF, HEIC, DNG), guests can upload video as MP4, MOV, M4V or MPEG. How large a single file may be depends on your plan.
What if somebody posts something you do not want in there?
You remove it, and deleted files sit in the bin for fourteen days in case you change your mind. If you would rather handle it in advance than afterwards, turn on approval: then nothing joins the album until you have seen it.
How long does the album stay online?
That depends on your plan: 45 days on the entry plan, up to 365 days on the larger ones, counted from the first time you publish. After that the album closes for guests. Your photos stay yours: you can download the whole event as a single zip at any point.
Can you download everything at once?
Yes. You pull the whole event down as a single zip, sorted per album inside it, at full size, exactly as your guests uploaded it. Do that before the active period ends and you have it on your own drive as well.
Is there a limit on the number of guests?
No. There is no cap on guests and no cap on photos per person; the limit is on the size of a single file. That avoids the situation where half the room hits a message telling them their allowance is used up.
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