How to get your guests’ photos from the wedding

Decide what you are asking for

Be specific. ‘Send us your photos’ gets a handful of posed shots. ‘Send us every photo and video you took, even the bad ones’ gets the laughing, the speeches from the third row and the ten seconds of your dad dancing that nobody else filmed. Ask for videos by name; most people assume you only want stills.

Decide who you are asking. Everyone at the wedding is the obvious answer, but the people who take the most are the bridal party, the cousins under thirty and whoever sat at the back for the ceremony. If you only have the energy to nag a few people, nag them.

The four ways, and what each does to your files

The group chat. WhatsApp, iMessage or Messenger. Free, everyone already has it, and it is where half the photos will end up whether you plan it or not. The cost is the files: chat apps compress photos and cap video length, and a month later the pictures are scattered through two hundred messages with no way to pull them out in one go.

A shared album. iCloud Shared Albums and Google Photos shared albums are free and easy for people who already use them. Check what they do to quality before you rely on one: Apple’s own documentation says photos in a Shared Album are reduced to 2048 pixels on the long edge and videos are delivered at up to 720p, which is fine for a phone screen and not fine for a print. Guests on the other platform will need an account or a workaround.

A shared folder. Google Drive, Dropbox or OneDrive with a ‘request files’ link keeps the originals. It works well for a dozen organised people and badly for a hundred: the upload button is easy to miss, some links ask for a sign-in, and nothing tells you who sent what.

A QR code event album. A service built for exactly this: guests scan a code on the table, pick files from their camera roll, and the originals land in a private album you download later. No app, no account, no compression. It costs money, usually a one-off fee per event, and the good ones tell you the price and the deletion date before you pay. their.photos is one of these; so are the services in the free options guide, which is worth reading before you decide.

Make the ask impossible to miss

Whatever you choose, the link has to be where people are looking. A QR code on every table, not just the one by the guestbook. The same link in the group chat, pinned. A line in the ceremony programme. One sentence from the MC after the speeches: ‘there is a code on your table, send them everything.’ Your photographer is not the messenger; they are busy.

Put the link in words under the code. Someone will photograph the card and forward the picture to a friend who wasn’t at that table, and a photo of a QR code scans perfectly well, but the printed link is what the person with a cracked screen will type.

Test it on a friend a month out. Send them only what you plan to give guests, on their own phone, and ask them to send you a photo and a video. If they need help, guests will too. The QR code guide covers sizing and placement.

Tell people what happens to their photos

Guests send more when they know who will see it. Say it on the card: ‘these go to us; nobody else sees them unless we share the album back.’ If you plan to open the album to everyone afterwards, say that too, because a photo of someone’s toddler asleep under a table is a different gift when the whole wedding can download it.

Ask for originals and mean it. Most people will send whatever the app offers; if there is a choice between ‘actual size’ and ‘medium’, the medium one is what they will pick unless you have said otherwise.

Before, during and after

Before: set it up weeks ahead, test it, print the cards, and put the link in the invitation follow-up so early uploads start with the rehearsal dinner.

During: the code on the tables does the work. Do not spend your own wedding reminding people. Venue Wi-Fi is often poor and phones are busy; a lot of the footage will not move until people are home.

After: the morning after is when most of it arrives, on home Wi-Fi, from people scrolling through what they shot. Send the link once more that day, and once more a week later for the people who were travelling. Keep collection open for at least a month; the honeymoon is exactly when a guest finally finds the video of the first dance.

What to do with eight hundred files

Download the originals as soon as collection closes and keep two copies in places you control: a drive at home and a cloud account you pay for. Services delete on a schedule, and they tell you when; read that date before you book.

Then share back. The guest who filmed the speeches wants the photos of themselves at the table. If the service you used can show the album to guests at the same link, turn that on after the day; if not, a shared album is fine for this, because now you have the originals safe.

Pick ten to print. Not the posed ones; the photographer has those. The ones that only a guest could have taken.

If you only do three things

Ask for videos as well as photos, in those words. Put the code on every table with the link written under it. Send the link again the morning after.

Questions people ask

How do we ask without being pushy?

Once on the table, once in the chat, once the morning after. Three asks, each in a different place, is not pushy. Ten messages in the group chat is.

Do guests need to install an app?

Not with a QR event album; the link opens in the phone’s browser. Shared albums and folders vary: some need an account on the same platform. Test with a friend who uses the other kind of phone.

Will the photos be full quality?

That depends entirely on the route. Chat apps and iCloud Shared Albums reduce them; Apple states 2048 pixels on the long edge and 720p video for Shared Albums. A file-request folder or a collection service that keeps originals gives you the file as it was shot.

What if guests forget?

They will. That is what the morning-after message is for, and why collection should stay open for weeks rather than days.

How long should we keep collecting?

A month is a good default. Long enough for the honeymoon and the travelling guests, short enough that the album is still a fresh thing when you share it back.