Your wedding is one of the most important moments of your life. And while the day itself may pass in the blink of an eye, the wedding photos serve as timeless reminders of a special occasion.
Now that you have seen the photos from your wedding photographer (and they are absolutely gorgeous), you want to share them with your guests—who were such an important part of your celebration.
How should you do it?
In this article, we walk through the 8 best ways to share your wedding photos with your guests—from photo sharing platforms to traditional methods like printing a photo album.
Honcho
With Honcho, you can share your wedding photos in a beautiful online gallery. Honcho has two key features that set it apart from other photo sharing platforms.
- Honcho helps you share the right photos to the right guests, with AI-powered face recognition. All your guests have to do is upload a selfie, and Honcho will automatically find their photos by matching with the selfie. This makes it extremely convenient for guests to find their own photos without having to browse through the whole gallery.
- Honcho gives you full control over privacy. It lets you password protect the online gallery, so that only selected people have access to it. Alternatively, you can blur all of the photos in the gallery. Only photos that are found with face recognition are unblurred, which means your guests can only see their own photos and no one else’s. Hence, you can freely share the online gallery, while maintaining everyone’s privacy.
That said, the best way to use Honcho is during your wedding, because it lets your wedding photographer instantly share their photos. After all, everyone is most excited to see the photos during the wedding, not the usual days or weeks after it’s over.
Honcho does this by helping wedding photographers upload their photos from camera to cloud, while they shoot. They just have to connect their camera to their smartphone, with the Honcho app installed. The photos are automatically transferred to the app and uploaded to the cloud, and they can be viewed in the online gallery.
On top of that, Honcho makes it easy for you to display a live slideshow of the wedding photos on any screen. It’s the most powerful way to add excitement to your wedding, because there’s just something magical about seeing photos of yourself on a large screen.
With Honcho, wedding photography becomes more than just documenting your big day. It’s a meaningful experience that adds to your wedding, by letting everyone engage with the photos while the wedding is still ongoing.
Remember, your wedding photos are important not just to you. They are important to your guests too. Your wedding is a special occasion for them, and they might have taken photos with people they have not seen in a while. With Honcho, you give everyone the greatest gift—photos of a special event that everyone was a part of.
Make a difference to your wedding by signing up for Honcho or telling your photographer about it. Your photographer would love to hear about a game-changing app like Honcho—just ask the thousands of photographers already using it.
File-Sharing Platforms
There are many file sharing platforms that are widely used, reliable and offer generous free tiers. Some of the popular ones are Google Drive (or Google Photos), Dropbox, OneDrive and iCloud.
Regardless of your platform of choice, they all work in pretty much the same way. You upload your wedding photos to a folder, and create a link to share the folder with your guests. If privacy is a concern, you can set a password for the folder or only invite specific people to access the folder.
The advantage of this method is that it’s free (you likely won’t exceed the free plan) and the photos are shared in original quality. However, since file sharing platforms are built for a general audience, they do not have the features that Honcho offers, such as face recognition and instant sharing of photos.
Social Media
If privacy is not a big concern for you or your guests, you can share your wedding photos on social media. Uploading the photos to an album on Facebook is probably the best option, since you can upload up to 1,000 photos. If you prefer Instagram, you will be limited to 10 photos in a single carousel post, restricting you to only the highlights.
The advantage of social media is that your guests are already using the platforms, and at least some of them will see your wedding photos. Hence, you do not have to manually distribute the photos to your guests. In addition, you can get additional interaction, such as likes and comments, on the photos.
The disadvantage is that many guests will miss out on the photos, since the algorithms will not show the photos to all of your friends or followers. Your photos will also be compressed and can lose significant image quality.
Messaging Apps
Messaging apps like iMessage, WhatsApp and Telegram let you share your wedding photos one-on-one or in group chats. Since you likely already have group chats with your guests, or at least a segment of them (such as your bridal party or work group), this is a convenient method to distribute selected photos to each group.
There are a couple of advantages of using messaging apps over social media.
- Your photos remain private and cannot be seen by anyone outside of the chat.
- You know that everyone in your chat will see your photos, unlike social media where the photos might not be shown to everyone by the algorithm.
Messaging apps will significantly compress your wedding photos, but that’s usually acceptable for casual viewing on a phone screen.
Wedding Photo Sharing Apps
There are photo sharing apps that are designed specifically for events and weddings—like Kululu, Guestpix and Wedibox. The basic idea is that guests can scan a QR code to upload their photos to a single album. Hence, everyone at your wedding can contribute photos to the album, allowing you to collect photos from multiple perspectives. Of course, you can also upload your wedding photos to the same album to share them with your guests.
These apps can add to the experience of your wedding, by providing an activity for guests to participate in. They often come with additional features, such as live slideshows, video uploads and leaving messages in a guestbook.
The biggest challenge is usually getting your guests to contribute photos, because they are busy interacting with you and the other guests, or they feel like it’s a hassle. You also need to think about technical support. While the process can seem simple, not everyone is tech savvy—especially people who didn’t grow up with smartphones.
Wedding Website
If you created a wedding website to handle your RSVPs and share your wedding details, there’s a good chance that you can also upload your wedding photos to the same website. Some examples of wedding website builders are The Knot, Joy and Minted, and they usually offer templates, customization options, photo galleries and password protection.
Since your guests already know about your wedding website, it makes sense to share your wedding photos there. The advantage of this approach is centralization—all of your wedding details and photos are in a single place, like a timeline of your big day. You can also customize your photo gallery to look exactly the way you want, so it fits into the overall theme of your wedding.
Photo Albums
If you’d like a more personal touch, you can print your wedding photos in an album for the extra special guests, like your family and bridal party. You can even make the effort to create different albums with different photos, so they are relevant to each person.
Obviously, this takes a lot more time, but there are photo album creators (like Mixbook, Artifact Uprising and Vistaprint) that simplify the process, and handle the printing and shipping.
This is an amazing gift for your guests and we can’t think of a better way for you to show your appreciation. After all, we’re living in an age that’s overflowing with digital images, and nothing can beat holding and flipping through a physical photo album.
Physical Storage Devices
While this method can seem old school with all the online methods available, it’s a fool proof way to share your wedding photos with guests who are not as tech savvy. Most USB flash drives come with storage of at least several gigabytes (GB), which is more than sufficient to store all of your wedding photos and even some videos.
You can add a personal touch by sending the USB flash drive in a custom wooden box, or sending it together with a thank you card, photo album or several prints.
