Weddingbee Blog

So you’ve hired a photographer. Very important. But what about all those other pictures that guests have taken? What if they captured moments that the photographer did not? One, or even two professional photographers cannot be everywhere. To try and collect all the photos from our hoarding guests, I used a shared online photo site like many other savvy brides.

I created a Flickr account just for the wedding, and paid the $25 or so to upgrade the account so you can have unlimited space (this was after one of our guests uploaded high resolution files that took up a good portion of our memory). I then sent out the following email to guests a few weeks after the wedding:

We are back from the honeymoon, all rested and wishing for about 5 more months of vacation. We can dream, can’t we? Thank you all for your love and friendship during the wedding weekend and beyond, we had an incredibly wonderful time celebrating with all of you.

While hopefully we deluged you with enough drink and food to keep you well occupied during the wedding, if there are any pictures you took that you would be willing to share, we have created a Flickr account for you to upload your photos. To upload your photos:

1. Go to Flickr.com

2. Sign in with the username: [ ]

3. Password is: [ ]

4. Click on the blue link on the right that says “Upload Photos & Videos”.

5. Follow directions to upload (your photos will already need to be on your computer’s hard drive)

6. Ta-da!!

We know this takes a bit of effort and we truly appreciate any photos you would like to share. Please keep in mind that the Flickr account is one that can be accessed by all wedding guests, so try not to be embarrassing, okay? Actually, go ahead, what do we care.

Thank you again!

I’m really glad we did this because while not everyone is going to take the time to upload their photos, I definitely love having at least some guest photos. Here’s a sampling:

Pic from the welcome event, where there was no hired photographer.

Look at me dragging that man to the altar.

Someone seems to be having a good time. Note almost-drained cocktail.

A girl’s gotta eat. Notice I’m not talking to anyone. I’m focused on the task at hand.

Somebody fully appreciating the talent and hard work of my sister

I’m so glad we did this, and might end up printing little notes with the Flickr directions to include in our thank you cards (NO I HAVEN’T DONE THESE YET STOP LOOKING AT ME LIKE THAT) to gently remind anyone who needs to get off their lazy ass and upload their photos.

Are you planning on trying to corral guests’ photos? What approach are you using?

All personal and guest photos