Whether your wedding has already happened, or you are getting those last-minute details out the way and loose ends tied. Figuring out how to collect photos from your guests of your big day can be a head-scratcher. You want to get them easily, and quickly – because the longer you leave it, the more likely people are to forget!
What are the best ways to collect wedding photos from guests? Some great methods of gathering photos are:
- Free Photo Apps
- Paid Photo Apps
- Gogotick
- Polaroids
We’ll be delving into the best methods, the advantages and disadvantages, and our personal favorites.
One of the Most Popular Way of Collecting Wedding Photos
The Guest
This one is the most popular! The Guest, created by The Knot, is a widely used app, recognized by bridal companies such as BRIDES and Style Me Pretty , as well as being featured on Refinery 29. It’s not free, however, costing around a hundred dollars per event. However, it’s a fantastically efficient way of gathering your memories together.
We have all experienced the extreme frustration of that one friend or family member who takes a Jurassic age to get something done. There’s your friend who takes six months to send over the vacation photos or your dad, who is oblivious to the world of technology and can’t figure out how to copy and paste.
If you’re worried about how to get your wedding photos from your guests after the event, the best thing to do is eliminate the ‘after.’
The thing that makes The Guest so efficient is its real-time auto-share features. Rather than asking your guests to upload all of their photos and videos one by one after the wedding has taken place, it allows you to send them an invite to a free app download before the event. Once accepted, this invite allows users to auto-share all of their content from the big day – no uploading or tagging necessary!
Once the wedding begins, the app reminds guests to start snapping. Any photos they take on their devices from this moment are automatically and instantly shared with the feed for everyone attending to see.
When you’re all partied out, and it’s time to go home, the sharing features automatically stop.
Guests also have the option to turn off the auto-share feature if they want to head out early. All guests also have the option to pause sharing, and both guests and the lucky couple are able to delete photos they’re not a fan of – as not everyone wants a drunken mugshot displayed for the entire wedding party to see.
The price includes unlimited photo and video uploads, so you don’t have to worry about extra charges afterward, and inviting guests takes no more than 10 minutes! Guests receive a personalized link that sends them to the app download button.
This app isn’t just limited to weddings – why not collect memories from the run-up to the big day as well! The Guest offers discounts for packages, so if you wanted to capture your Bachelorette Party, Bridal Shower, or any other pre-wedding event you’re hosting – you can! Although, you may want to give the Bachelorette Party a pass…
On average, couples tend to get around 1,000 photos from guests while using this app, and when pairing this with the photographs from the professional photographer – you’ve got your whole day covered from start to finish! Some couples who are on a tight budget, have chosen to opt-out of the professional photographer all-together, and have asked family and friends to take as many photos throughout the day as they can. A simple, money-saving tip!
Their website even lets you estimate the number of images you could potentially receive, depending on the number of guests attending your wedding. Head on over and make a guesstimate: The Guest: Weddings
Free Options to Gather Up Your Guests Photos
We all know that Facebook has been a long-standing form of sharing photos of you and your friends since 2004. People have been uploading and tagging their friends into an embarrassing drunken night out photos since the dawn of time – or at least the last decade.
If you view the ‘Photos of You’ section on your Facebook profile, you can see a long list of images that other people have tagged you in. What a lot of people don’t know is that you can actually set up an action that will automatically download and save all photos you have been tagged in to Dropbox. If you share the Dropbox link, you can even download the app version for your devices, that allows you to share images with other people instantly by sharing folders, creating group folders, and more.
An IFTTT recipe has been created, which allows you to automatically save all tagged photos of you to a Dropbox folder, which you can then download to your computer or devices and use as you wish. If you want to give this a go, click here: Save Photos You’re Tagged In On Facebook to a Dropbox Folder
One downside of using Dropbox is that you will only receive 2BG space for free. Dropbox Basic accounts offer 2 GB of storage space for free. However, there is the option to upgrade for a price, but the upgrading options can be quite pricey for what you get.
The upgrade options include a 2TB Dropbox Plus account, which is a HUGE jump up from the free package, 3TBs of space when you purchase the Dropbox Professional account, and a massive 5GB of storage for your photos and videos when you upgrade to the Dropbox Business account.
Whether you want to spend the extra money for your big day is up to you. Dropbox upgrades are priced at quite a lot less than some of the other photo storage options online, so they’re definitely one to keep in mind.
If you want to check out the Dropbox website and get a little more friendly with it, here’s a link to do so: Dropbox
Instagram is the mothership of photo sharing. It’s full of aspiring photographers, Instagram influencers, and of course, your wanderlust fanatics. The best part about it – it’s free!
Like Facebook, you can also view a section of your profile with tagged images of yourself that your friends and family have shared. However, you can’t download these photos. We have found a website with an IFTTT recipe, which allows you to create a hashtag and download all photos shared using this hashtag to your Dropbox account.
What makes this more fun than the Facebook version? You get the chance to be the millennial you always wanted to be, and create your very own Wedding Hashtag! You could then create a personalized sign for your wedding venue, informing all guests to share their images of the big day to Instagram with your very own personal hashtag – adorable!
As we discussed above, Dropbox gives you free usage up to 2GB, and then any upgrades will come at a cost. However, due to the nature of the Instagram app, you aren’t likely to fill the 2GB amount as Instagram doesn’t have folders or multiple upload options. Guests will most likely only be uploading a few images, so they don’t clutter their Instagram feed.
Want to give the Instagram IFTTT a go? Head over to this page: Get Started With IFTTT
Flickr
Flickr is another method of photo sharing that is widely known, and also mostly free. In recent years, Flickr seems to have taken a backseat, and a lot of people seem to have forgotten it exists – however, rest assured, it’s still hanging in there!
Flickr is a great app for photographers, as it allows them to gain inspiration from other photographers alike, and allows you to share the camera settings you used. It’s also great for people who want to share photos with friends and family, and therefore could be a useful tool for a wedding.
You can sign up for free at Flickr and store 1,000 photos on the site. This, in itself, is a shame, as Flickr used to be a free site. However, due to the average amount of images collected from wedding guests being around 1,000, this should be the perfect amount of storage for your big day, and if not – upgrade. It also has a free app you and your guests can download to your devices, making sharing that bit easier.
“Photos aren’t limited by resolution and are stored in their original quality. Prior to this change, Flickr users on the free plan were given 1 terabyte, or 1,000 gigabytes, of free storage space at full resolution.”
Source: Petapixel
On the Flickr website, you are able to create a private shared folder with friends and family. In order to do this, you must:
- Invite all of your guests to the group.
- Ask your guests to upload their photos to their photo streams.
- Ask each Guest to click ‘Organizer’ and then the ‘Your Groups’ tab.
- Ask guests to drag the images into your wedding group folder.
It is pretty simple to do. However, for those guests who have never used the website before or for those older guests who aren’t up to date on technology, this might be a huge ask. The disadvantage of having to individually ask guests to upload their photos and follow these steps is the lack of efficiency. A lot of people have busy lives outside of your celebrations so that you may end up waiting weeks, months (dare we say it, years) to gather images from all your guests together.
However, when you consider that Flickr is a mostly free tool for anyone to use, it may be worth it to save some pennies in the long run. Want to give Flickr a go? Check it out: Flickr
Other Options to Collect Wedding Photos
Gogotick
Gogotick is for those couples who want to go a little bit extra on their wedding day. So if you’ve been dreaming of your wedding since you were eight years old, fawning over wedding magazines, and creating wedding dress scrapbooks – this one is for you.
Gogotick is a little more on the expensive side of wedding photo options. However, it comes with so many features and privacy guarranties that it is worthy of consideration, and there are some new features to come in the next months, keep tuned. It has been featured by many sources. Gogotick is different because it is also an exclusive App for the event with the possibility to manage it from a computer. It increases the event experience for your guests, and for you.
The fancy photo site has three different packages, which are priced as follows:
- Single Event: 99 €
- Professional Plan 29 €/month
- Corporate Plan 199 €/month
Signing up to the Single event allows you to create your very own personal wedding event, which gives you a unique event, that you can send to invite your guests as a link. You can create multiple private groups and everyone has its own link to be sent to chosen guests. For example, you may want to create a Bachelorette group, all groups are private, and have a unique link, so you can send it for certain people you want to view this. After all, most of the time we don’t want our parents rummaging through our drunken shots!
Once you have created your event, and personalized it, you can send the link with the invitation URL. The guest will receive it which is a personalized instruction to enter the event. This URL is customized and include a photo of the couple if it was setup as the main event photo profile, and explain to your guests step-by-step how to download the app and join your event (even any private group you created). Quite often, couples choose to use these instruction and URL as their wedding invitations – you may as well kill two birds with one stone and save a bit of cash!
Guests can then download the app, and after that click again on the URL which will let them enter to the event, and start snapping! Photos will automatically go straight into the event. Since wifi or an internet connection isn’t required, no one has to panic about photos not uploading, or images being lost. There is even a choice of filters for those guests who have a mild Snapchat obsession.
The premium package (professional and corporate plans) gets even better. You receive everything we’ve just reviewed, PLUS other features, one of those is a live slideshow of all your photos, which can be projected onto a screen for everyone to see on the night! Don’t worry–the photos or short videos can be moderated before they are displayed. That way, you can avoid any embarrassment. This option is perfect for wedding planners that can help them in their job, even it is a way to sell some extra services. If you are interested we highly suggest you to contact us.
The new amazing features that are being developed will be unveiled in the coming months. We will update this post with more information. Stay tuned!
Phew! That was a lot to cover. Although this option has a slightly higher price, it is customizable and has a package catered to most budgets, and there are some discount coupons out there too. We’ll leave it up to you to decide whether all these extra features are what your special day needs. Gogotick can be free too, but with the basic options. Check out Gogotick website to find out more: Gogotick
Polaroid Cameras
Our final option is to invest in some polaroid cameras for your wedding day. Polaroid cameras make an adorable table decoration, allow your guests to get creative with props, and capture some amazing memories of the day. You can hire polaroid cameras from companies such as Polaroid in Amazon for your big day, or you can purchase some second-hand.
You can create a hanging decoration with pegs, where your guests can leave their photos behind for you to collect at the end of the night. My cousin used this method, and it was both fun and adorable, it really allowed those family members who don’t usually cross paths to bond over a bit of fancy dress and a fun photoshoot.
Make sure you leave a sign letting your guests know where to leave their photos after they have taken them, as one risk with using polaroid snaps is most people want to take them home with them!
Final Thoughts
Whether you are on a tight budget or willing to invest some money into gathering all your guests’ photos together, the most important thing is that it’s done in a way that is simple and easy for everyone to use. Accessibility is the best way to get as many images as possible from as many different people so that you can relive your big day from the comfort of your own home.
There are so many free options out there that still allow you to use your creativity and really personalize your wedding by creating hashtags, and customized signs and decorations for the day.
A lot of people forget that once your big day is over, you only have the memories and the photographs to remember it by, which is why photographs are so important and beneficial to newlyweds. So whatever option you choose, make sure you’re organized and let your guests know your plans in advance so they can be on board with your ideas and give you the best experience you could possibly wish for.
