There are many wedding photo sharing apps that let you collect photos taken by your guests. They work by providing a QR code that your guests can scan, which brings them to a website where they can upload their photos. Since no app download is required, it’s a convenient way for your guests to contribute photos of your wedding from different perspectives.
However, there are several shortcomings to this approach:
- It’s a challenge to get 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.
- We believe it’s more important for your guests to be present in the moment, than to record your wedding. After all, you’re inviting them because they are important people in your lives, not because of their photo taking skills.
- Most importantly, you’ve already hired someone to do this very job for you—your wedding photographer! And you’re getting curated and high quality photos—unlike the photos from your guests, which will vary in quality.
In our opinion, the better approach is quite different from what these wedding photo sharing apps do. Instead of getting photos from your guests, you should be giving them the photos from your wedding photographer, in real-time.
That way, your guests can enjoy your wedding without worrying about taking photos. The person best qualified to take photos of your wedding (the wedding photographer) can share the beautiful moments they capture with everyone. It adds to the experience of your wedding and lets everyone share in your joy.
As wedding photographers ourselves, we believe in this approach so much that we built Honcho to allow other photographers to do the same thing.
In this article, we’ll explain how Honcho helps wedding photographers instantly share photos with your guests, via face recognition. Or you can sign up for an account and see for yourself.
If you still want to collect photos from your guests, we recommend the best wedding photo sharing apps to help you do that.
You can also find our complementary wedding photography checklist.
Honcho
Instead of collecting photos from your guests, Honcho lets your wedding photographer instantly share their beautiful and professionally taken photos in an online gallery. 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 an online gallery.
You can share the online gallery with a link or QR code. Many of our clients will print the QR code and place it around the venue, or show it on a screen. The online gallery runs in any browser, and you don’t have to download any app to access it.
At the online gallery, guests can see all of your wedding photos to share in your joy. Or they can find just their own photos with face recognition, without having to browse through the whole gallery. All they have to do is upload a selfie, and Honcho will automatically find their photos by matching them with the selfie.
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 you can only see your own photos and no one else’s. Hence, you can freely share the online gallery, while maintaining everyone’s privacy.
Finally, Honcho makes it easy for you to display a live slideshow of the wedding photos on any screen. We’ve done thousands of events and weddings, and it’s the most powerful way to add excitement to your wedding. 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.
Wedibox
If you’re still looking to collect photos from your guests, there are many wedding photo sharing apps that can help you do that.
All of them work in the same way, by providing a QR code for your guests to scan, in order to upload their photos to a shared album.
The first option on our list is Wedibox. It allows your guests to upload unlimited photos and videos, so you don’t have to worry about hitting any limits.
They have a Digital Guestbook feature, which lets your guests leave messages. The guestbook can be password protected for privacy.
Finally, they provide ready-to-use Canva designs. For example, if you’d like to print out the QR code for your guests to scan, they provide templates for mini cards and table signs. That way, you don’t have to worry about creating the designs yourself or hiring a designer, which can be costly.
Guestpix
Like Wedibox, Guestpix also lets your guests upload unlimited photos, videos and guestbook messages. On top of that, their packages come with 12 months of uploads, so you can continue collecting photos and videos after your wedding.
You can create a live photo and video slideshow to showcase your wedding from multiple perspectives. As mentioned before, we’re big fans of live slideshows because they are so effective in creating energy and starting conversations.
A unique suggestion they provide is to play a game of I spy with your guests. Essentially, you can print a list of items for your guests to photograph—Guestpix provides a Canva template for that. Then, you can reward the best photo entry with a prize. It’s a fun activity to add to your wedding, which helps to engage your guests.
Guestlense
Next on the list is Guestlense, which also offers unlimited uploads of full-resolution photos and videos. It provides a 3-month upload period, so that your guests can continue contributing photos even after your wedding is over. In addition, it also has a generous 12-month access period—your photos and videos are available for download for a full year.
Guestlense comes with 7+ pre-made site layouts, which gives you control over how your gallery looks without weighing you down with too many customisation options. Like Wedibox, they offer QR code templates in Canva—but they make it even more convenient by offering a plan where they print and ship the QR cards for you.
Lense
Lense positions itself as the disposable camera app for weddings, which is an interesting approach. It recreates the experience of physical disposable cameras, and we all know how fun they are to use.
You can set a limit to the number of photos each guest can take. After all, disposable cameras don’t come with unlimited photos, and this encourages guests to be more selective in their shots.
Like a real disposable camera, guests are not able to see the photos instantly—they will only be revealed after some time. You can apply filters to the photos to replicate the disposable camera aesthetic.
Confetti
Even if you have prepared a wedding photo sharing app for your guests, the challenge is to get them to actually use it. Most guests simply won’t because they are busy interacting with you and the other guests, or they feel like it’s a hassle.
Confetti’s approach is to prompt your guests to upload their photos—they provide a list of fun prompts to make the experience more engaging. The prompts are texted to your guests, who can click on a link to upload their photos, videos and voice notes.
All of the entries are posted to a private feed and guests can contribute to it for up to 7 days.
Kululu
Like the other photo sharing apps, Kululu lets you create a private wedding album that your guests can contribute to by scanning a QR code. They can upload photos and videos with captions, as well as text posts. Depending on the plan, guests can continue uploading for 7 or 30 days from the wedding.
You can stream the uploads in real-time with a live slideshow, which can be displayed on any screen. It’s an amazing way to create excitement and encourage other guests to contribute to the album.
Kululu gives you the option to create a personalised experience, by customising the website with your own colours and styles.
GuestCam
GuestCam works in a similar way with the rest of the wedding photo sharing apps on this list. With a QR code, your guests can upload photos, videos and voice recordings. You can create up to 30 galleries to organise the uploads, which is useful for events on different dates—such as the engagement party, bridal shower and wedding day.
The feature that sets GuestCam apart is face recognition. Just like Honcho, guests can upload a selfie to find all of the photos that they appear in. That way, they can easily find their photos without having to scroll through the whole gallery.
WedUploader
WedUploader is a simple photo sharing app with just one feature—providing a QR code for your guests to upload their photos to a shared album. However, it doesn’t actually store your files. Instead, you have to connect it to your Google Drive, and all of the photos and videos are uploaded and stored there.
It’s a good option if you’re looking for a free app and you don’t need any of the extra features, like live slideshows.
Conclusion
Conventionally, wedding photo sharing apps work by letting you collect photos and videos from your guests. While it’s great to see your wedding from multiple perspectives, it’s often a challenge to get your guests to participate. The photos you collect will vary in quality, because not everyone is good at taking photos.
If your goal is to create a memorable experience for you and your guests, the better approach is to share the photos from your wedding photographer in real-time. After all, everyone loves seeing gorgeous photos capturing the best moments.
Honcho lets your wedding photographer instantly share their photos, while they shoot. It comes with face recognition, making it easy for your guests to find their own photos. With the live slideshow feature, you can showcase the photos on any screen to create excitement.
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.
