How to collect all the photos and videos shot by your guests

On your wedding day there will certainly be a professional photographer and videographer (and we are grateful if you chose us!) but, if you have been to a wedding at least once as guests, you will surely know that your friends and relatives will not spare themselves in terms of photos and videos shot especially with smartphones. There will also be the classic uncle passionate about photography with his latest generation SLR or mirrorless on the hunt for the perfect shot.

Not to mention the photos and videos shot during bachelor and bachelorette parties or those received by your friends before the wedding, but always related to that important event!

But have you ever wondered how many newlyweds have actually seen all the photos and videos shot by the guests at their wedding? And, would you be interested in having them available, in one place, convenient and accessible to both you and all your guests? All collected in a private gallery to watch and download? Said and done!
In this short article I'm going to show to you some solutions, including one that we at IstantiSenzaTempo are more than happy to offer you together with our services, completely free of charge!

In this somewhat strange period of waiting for the weddings of this season that never seem to come, we are still working for you, in order to support you and to offer you the best experience you can have with a wedding photographer and videographer.
I can already tell you that we have in store some other pleasant surprises for you.
But let's move on to the solutions to collect the photos and videos of your guests!

I shot this one, but did bride and groom get that selfie?

The Wedding Hashtag

A first solution could be to create an hashtag related to the event and have it used by guests when posting their photos and videos on social networks. However, this solution is really inconvenient for several reasons:

• first of all you have not guaranteed any kind of privacy: it is sufficient that one of your guests has a public profile, that your published photos can be seen by everyone;
• is an uncertain solution: a mistake in writing the hashtag is enough to not find any photos, moreover whoever uploads the photo must always remember to insert the hashtag and it is not certain that they do;
• after the wedding, it's up to you to collect all the photographs which, in some cases, will also be annoying to download (think about Instagram, for example)

It will likely turn out that, as long as there are photos/videos uploaded with the correct hashtag, you will leave there and forget them.

The IstantiSenzaTempo service

We haven't developed a dedicated app, which is why we believe our solution has significant advantages over that ones.

Once you have chosen us to document your wedding, we will create your reserved area in the section of our website called Your Memories. This area, which will have no expiration date, will be used not only for delivering your photos and videos in one or more galleries (for example, one for the Love Shooting and another one for the Wedding Day), but also to allow you to have a gallery of photos and videos uploaded by your guests.

Using it will be very simple: we will provide you with both a link and a QR code which will lead directly to the gallery and which will be accessible from any browser, both from mobile and tablet or computer. You can think of printing it on your Save the Date or on a business cards to hand out around the venue, if you have a wedding that will take place entirely in one place. Or you can share it with the classic methods: on your wedding website, if you have it, via WhatsApp or any other social network.

On the left, the screen for uploading photos and videos for your guests. On the right, an example of a QR Code (which leads to our home page), customizable in color and shape.

Using it is easy peasy: your guests just need to take pictures or record videos with the apps they are used to and know well, open the link, click on ADD PHOTOS and select photos and videos to upload. They can do it the same day or, in the case of photos/videos shot by reflex cameras, even after the wedding, from the comfort of their homes, with a PC and the Wi-Fi connection.

While using the apps you will never know if the uploaded files have been compressed or altered in any way (and in many cases they certainly will), with our solution the images and videos are uploaded to your gallery as they are and you can download them without loss whatsoever.
You can then decide whether or not to share this gallery with your guests, during or after the event, and whether to allow them to download its content or not: it is your reserved area and you are free to choice!
You could even think about projecting the content of the gallery on a screen at any time of the day!

This service is available exclusively to our customers and is free of charge.

A side note. It is certainly pleasant for you to see your guests enthusiastic about taking pictures of you and share them easily. However, there is a time of day when we strongly advise against allowing taking pictures: the ceremony. It is indeed sad to see some people following such an important moment – the most important of the day! – behind a screen, perhaps without even noticing what is happening around them because they are too caught up in what they're seeing through that screen.
So such solutions are welcome to allow you to have even more memories of the day, but limit their use to when it is actually valid to use it. Make this clear with a nice sign at the entrance to the ceremony location or by writing directly on the invitation or on the Save the Date: you would like to have an Unplugged Ceremony (read more about it here). It will be more engaging for them, you will have no distractions and we will have the pleasure of shooting everyone's faces, finally not hidden by phones, tablets or cameras.

Looking at a photograph taken by a guest

Other solutions: dedicated apps

If you are not our customers and you cannot access the solution offered for free by our Studio, there are various services, that use smartphone apps, able to give the possibility for your guests to upload the photographs of your wedding moments in your private area, and then give you the opportunity to see and possibly download them. Here are the best alternatives available today, strictly in alphabetical order.

Ceremony

The Guest

The Guest is the app of the famous web portal The Knot. Also in this case the procedure is the same: you create your account, create the event and share it with your guests. I think that at first it was a paid app (also very expensive!) And now you can use it for free. Unfortunately, I cannot confirm it because my Android smartphone is not compatible – yet it is recent and runs almost everything... – and I could not check directly in the app.
In any case, give it a chance because it has great reviews in both the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store.

Link al sito web

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Wedbox

WedShoots

If The Guest is The Knot's app, WedShoots is the one of WeddingWire (that is Hitched in UK, Bodas in Spain and Mexico, and so on), another famous web portal dedicated to marriage that you will surely know. Among other things, The Knot Worldwide group acquired WeddingWire for some years now, so the two portals are more or less the same thing.
However, the two apps are different, so you may want to try them both to see which one you like best.

Also WedShoots requires the same steps: registration, event creation and sharing, which in this case will take place through a code.
The app is completely free.

Website

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