Can we keep the album closed until after the wedding?

Why would you want to keep the album closed?

Three reasons, and all three come from couples who told us afterwards.

The dress. You have spent half a year making sure nobody sees it before the moment itself, and then at quarter past nine somebody puts a photo of the getting ready into an album the whole guest list can open. With a closed album that photo can go in and nobody sees it. The hairdresser can photograph, the bride's mother can too, and it stays a surprise.

The phones. The moment there is an album running live, there is also a reason to look at it, and that happens exactly while somebody is giving a speech. A closed album takes that reason away: uploading is worth doing, looking is not. That is a softer version of a phone ban, and according to research Made for Moments commissioned among 706 people, 49.9 per cent of couples make some kind of agreement about phones anyway. Of that group, two thirds keep it to the ceremony.

And the third: there is still something to come. A wedding stops at some point, usually in the middle of the night, and the day after is empty. If the album opens at three on Sunday, your day has one more moment in it. Everybody is at home on the sofa recovering by then, and four hundred photos of an evening they were at arrive all at once. That is a different feeling from photos that had been sitting there the whole time.

What does a guest see of a closed album?

No error message and no closed door. The album is there, with the name you gave it, and the tiles inside it are blurred. That is a difference you only notice when you put it next to a service that hides such an album altogether: a guest who sees nothing thinks their upload never arrived, and tries again or asks somebody. A guest who sees a blurred album understands that there is something in it and that they get it later.

Uploading works exactly the same in the meantime. Camera on the card, pick, done. There is no extra screen and no warning.

As the owner you always see everything, including while it is closed. That is handier than it sounds: you can check between courses whether it is running, and on Saturday night you can already take out the two photos that do not belong before anybody has ever seen them. Deleted files stay in the bin for fourteen days, so that is reversible.

How do you set this up? Four steps

1. 01Make two albums instead of oneOne is called something like "The whole day" and stays open. The other is called "The reveal" and closes. How many albums you can make depends on your plan: three, ten or fifty.
2. 02Set the second album to closedThat is one switch inside the album itself. From that moment it is blurred for guests and plainly visible for you. You can flip it back at any time.
3. 03Put it on the cardOne line will do: put your photos in, we will show everything at once on Sunday afternoon. Without that line guests assume something is broken. More example sentences are in the piece on the wording for the card.
4. 04Agree the moment in advancePut it in the diary, Sunday at three for example. A moment you name in advance is an appointment people look forward to. An album that opens at a random time is one half your guests do not see until Tuesday.

Why do most couples run two albums?

Because otherwise you have to choose between two things that both do something. The screen in the room is what keeps guests uploading: they look to see whether their own photo is up yet, and that produces the second and the third upload. The reveal is what gives the Sunday something. With two albums you have both.

In practice it looks like this. The open album is called something like "The party" and hangs on the projector: the dance floor, the bar and the sparklers go in there. The closed album is called "The morning" or "The reveal": getting ready, the ceremony and later the first pictures from your photographer go in there. Both are on the cards, because a guest picks which album their photo goes into while they upload.

One more thing you can do is use the closed album as a second wave. Your photographer needs eight to ten weeks for their selection, so when it lands, put a handful of their pictures in the same closed album and open it again. Then everybody who was there that day gets one more message in November.

When do you open it?

Three on Sunday afternoon is the most chosen time, and there is a reason for it: everybody is home by then, rested enough to look and not yet back in the working week. Sunday morning is too early, because the late guests do not go through their roll until they are awake.

Monday evening works too, and then you have Saturday and Sunday to go through everything yourself. What you should above all not do is wait until you are back from your honeymoon: by then the day is too far away and half your guests have already shared their own photos somewhere else. How to get your guests' photos anyway when you wait too long is a separate and much more tedious story.