Sooooo, the wedding day is over, and you’ve received your wedding photos ! Which is SO exciting. You get to relive your wedding day over and over and over again, and maybe even see some things you might have missed on your actual wedding day. Now, what happens next? Well, as much as I would love to keep your gallery up on my website until the end of time, that just isn’t the safest place for your wedding photos. So what should you do with your wedding photos once you receive them? I’m glad you asked !
After the Wedding Day
You and your lover will be laying low, recovering from one of the best nights of your life, and SO ready to relive all of the moments that made up your wedding day. A couple of weeks after your wedding day you will receive an email from me. In this email, there will be a link to your wedding album in the email via my online gallery delivery system Pic-Time !
With this link, you will be able to use the online album to access and view your online gallery of wedding photos, download the photos and even share the photos with family and friends ! The BEAUTIFUL online gallery also has access to a print shop where you and your partner can order prints from your wedding day right from your album. This will all happen around four-six weeks after your wedding day !
What Should You Do With Your Wedding Photos Once You Recieve Them?
Downloading Your Wedding Photos
With your Pic Time album you’ll be able to download your photos and save them to your computer, hard drive or another external location. Especially for wedding photos, I always suggest to my clients that they download both their high-resolution photos and their websize photos to their computer and an additional location.
Where to Store Your Wedding Photos
This location can look like an external hard drive, a cloud, or another place for safe keeping. You want to make sure you always have at LEAST two digital copies of your wedding photos, so if you save them on a hard drive and it crashes, make sure to duplicate the photos to a new location. Other websites like Drop Box as well as Google Photos are great places to keep duplicate copies. I do recommend having the high-resolution photos on a device somewhere though for printing and duplicating your images.
Ordering Prints
Why You Should Print your Wedding Photos
Photos are not meant to live on screens, I firmly believe this. The probability of you pulling up your wedding photos on your phones years from now to reminisce on all the fun you had is pretty slim. That’s why I ALWAYS encourage my couples to print their photos either in an album, in a memory box, or to hang up around your home.
How to Order Prints
As a photographer, I make sure to test print my photos to ensure the highest quality and color when you do print your wedding photos. In my test prints, I have found that it is SUPER important to print your photos as matte prints and use my shop linked to your album, or another local high-end printing service like Nations Photo Lab.
Register For or Order a Wedding Album
One of the best ways to experience your photos over and over again is to have them out where you can see them every day ! In my experience, my couples who print their photos and have them out for everyone to see, look at the photos twice as often as those who only view their photos on their phones. You can order an album through the online album I sent your photos in, or you can make one yourself ! Both options are great for making sure your wedding photos are enjoyed as you live your day-to-day life.
Sharing Your Photos
One of the best parts about receiving your wedding photos is taking the time to share the photos with friends and family and reminisce your wedding day! These days there are so many cool ways to share your wedding photos with friends and family, here are some of my favorite ways to share your wedding photos with your loved ones.
First off! When going to share your wedding photos I highly recommend sharing the photos as high-resolution files. This will ensure the photos you’re sharing are of the highest quality and if your family and friends decide to print them, they will have great-quality images.
Sharing Your Photos Via Your Pic-Time Link
If you’re wanting to go the easiest route to share your photos, if you go to the bottom of the email I sent the album to you, you will find a link at the bottom of the email that will allow you to share your wedding album with your friends and family. From there they will be able to access your album and see all the photos from your wedding day!
Sharing Your Photos Via An External Website
If you plan to back up your photos on an external website like Google Photos or DropBox, you can share the album with friends and family there! Start an email thread with your immediate family and share the link to give them access to your wedding photos. When sharing on websites like these along with social media websites, be sure to ALWAYS share the high-resolution images.
In Person!
My personal favorite way to share your photos with your friends and family is in person! After you get your wedding photos and your wedding video back, plan a viewing party for you and your closest friends and family. Order some takeout put together a slide show, and have some fun reminiscing on your wedding day and hearing some of the stories you might have missed.
Fun Ideas for Printing Your Photos
There are SO many different ways to incorporate your wedding photos into your home and life these days, but these are some of my favorite ways to use your wedding photos after you receive them!
Wedding Guest Book
So this one isn’t for your wedding photos, but for your engagement photos! After you receive your engagement photos, print out an album with ALL your engagement photos and use them as your guest book! It’s such a fun way to look back at your wedding day and everyone who was a part of it as well as reminisce on your engagement session.
Gallery Wall
Gallery walls are SO MUCH FUN, but, make your gallery wall even cooler and incorporate not just photos but other ways to remember your wedding day! Have your wedding bouquet painted for your first anniversary, hang your wedding vows in a shadow box, or even hang your marriage license! These items combined with photos from your wedding day make for such a unique statement in your home and make such a cool way to remember your wedding day.
Thank You Cards
One of the easiest ways to send some letters of thanks to your friends and family is through thank you cards! Print your favorite wedding photo on some thank you cards and send them out to your friends and family. Or even better, if you have a favorite photo with your loved one from the day, send that as a thank you!
In the whirlwind that is your wedding day, when you finally receive your wedding photos, it’s easy to get so caught up in looking at your images on screen that you forget to take them any further. Wedding photos are meant to live OUTSIDE of your wedding day, and I believe it’s beyond important to have your photos in a space where you can look back at them and reminisce on your wedding day again and again! Looking for more wedding day tips and inspiration? Head to my blog for more!
