How to collect photos from your wedding guests

Your photographer will get the posed shots and the big moments. Your guests get everything else: the table that never stopped laughing, Nan on the dance floor, the speech from the angle the photographer could not reach. The trouble is that those photos live on a hundred different phones, and most of them never leave.

Here is every common way to collect them, honestly compared.

1. Ask everyone to send them afterwards

The default, and the one that collects the least. Once guests are home the answer is always “I will send them later”, and later rarely comes. The guests who do send them tend to send three, not thirty. If you do nothing else, at least ask on the night, not the week after.

2. A shared album (iCloud or Google Photos)

Free and familiar. The catch is the split between iPhone and Android: an iCloud shared album is smooth for Apple users and awkward for everyone else, and Google Photos asks people to have, or make, a Google account to add photos. iCloud shared albums also keep smaller copies of the photos rather than the originals. Good for a small wedding where everyone has the same phone; harder for a mixed crowd of 120.

3. A group chat (WhatsApp, Messenger)

Everyone already has it, which is its strength. But photos are compressed unless people remember to send them in HD, the chat fills up with “congrats!!” and plans for breakfast, and saving 400 photos out of a chat one at a time is nobody's idea of a honeymoon. Fine for a dozen close friends.

4. A wedding hashtag

Lovely when it works, but you only get what people post publicly, and plenty of guests do not use Instagram, keep their accounts private, or would rather not post your wedding to the world. Hashtags are a nice extra, not a collection method.

5. Disposable cameras on the tables

Charming, and the photos have a look nobody can fake. They also cost money per camera and again to develop, give you 27 shots each, and half the frames are a thumb or a ceiling. Treat them as a keepsake, not as coverage.

6. A QR code photo sharing service

Guests scan a code on the table with their phone camera and their photos go straight into one album, usually with no app or account. Because it happens during the night rather than after it, you collect far more, and many services can show the photos on a screen at the reception, which gets more people sharing. The things to check: whether guests really need no app, whether you can approve photos before they appear on a screen, how long the photos are kept, and whether you get the full-quality originals.

What actually makes the difference

Whichever method you choose, three things decide how many photos you end up with:

• Make it one step. Every extra step, an app download, an account, a password, loses guests. Older guests give up first, and they often take the photos nobody else does.
• Ask at the right moment. One line from the MC early in the night does more than any sign. Ask again after the speeches.
• Put it where people sit. A card on every table gets scanned. A poster by the door gets walked past.

There is more on this in getting guests to actually share their photos.

GuestCam is the QR code kind, built in Orange, NSW: no app or account for guests, an optional live photo wall, approval before anything goes on screen if you want it, and one album with a full ZIP download afterwards. See GuestCam for weddings.