Before the wedding, the bride spends countless hours planning and preparing for her big day. As her photographer, you capture all the hard work she did and create memorable images for her. After you receive your images back from a wedding photo editor, it’s time to deliver them to your bride. Once she has the images, the next step is for her to find out the best way to share wedding photos with her family and friends.
Best Way to Share Wedding Photos
As the expert in all things wedding photography, you can help her by providing her with a list of photo sharing options. To help you with that list, we put together ways for your bride to share her photos. This list includes both the best way to share wedding photos online and also includes offline options. Though this list is meant to help the bride showcase unforgettable photography to her friends and family, it is also a valuable way to share your work and keep your business top of mind with people who may need a wedding photographer in the future.
Social Media
With billions of users on the various social media platforms, social media is definitely one of the places your bride will share photos. There are so many options for uploading, storing, sharing, liking, commenting, and more on these platforms. Take a look below at a few social sharing options your bride has when she wants to showcase the photos from her wedding day.
1. Facebook
Your bride’s family and friends are likely on Facebook and participate in sharing, liking, and commenting on posts. And as a platform that has at least 350 million photos shared each day, Facebook is a great place for your bride to share her photos. To find the best way to share wedding photos on Facebook, she can create an album, tag her family and friends, and even share her photos with those who couldn’t make the wedding. Plus, with the option of creating an album, your bride can easily upload multiple photos at once.
2. Instagram
Another social platform that is ideal for your bride to share her wedding images on is Instagram. This platform gets at least 90 million photos and videos shared each day. Your bride can post to her heart’s desire on her feed and even Instagram Stories. If you and your bride created a unique hashtag, she can use that on the images as she shares them. She can also tell her family and friends to use that same hashtag when they upload their photos. This will help place all the images in one area where everyone can view them all at once.
3. Pinterest
Before the wedding day, Pinterest can be a valuable tool for planning and preparing. Chances are, your bride looked at Pinterest to gain inspiration for her photos, dress, accessories, details, and more. If your bride is an avid user of Pinterest, she may also share her images there once she receives them. For example, take a look at how Blogger Brides uses Pinterest to showcase behind-the-scenes details of how they plan their own weddings.
4. Flickr
Flickr is a popular, long-standing, social platform that your bride can use to share her photos. With billions of images and millions of groups, your bride can create her own group, share her photos, and invite her family and friends to do the same. Your bride can download the free app, manage her group, and view all the amazing photos from her big day.
Online Photo Gallery
Wedding photographers are no strangers to online galleries, and many use them to deliver digital files to their clients. Online galleries can be used to share images from the engagement session and wedding day, and are often times used to help brides choose their favorite images for prints, albums, and more. Here are a few online gallery options brides can use to share their wedding photos.
5. Extra
As a free service for ShootDotEdit Customers, Extra is a gallery that makes it easy for every guest to view and order wedding photos online. To access Extra, you simply deliver the link to your bride and she can share with her loved ones. This gives them full access to every photo you delivered to your bride after the wedding day.
6. Her Own Website
Many brides make the decision to create their own website through The Knot, Wedding Wire, or other options. This may be the case for your bride, and the great news is she can upload and share the photos on her website. Since guests likely already have a link to the website from details about the wedding, they can easily access the photos once uploaded.
7. Shutterfly
Shutterfly is an online platform that specializes in image publishing services. It also has the option for your bride to create a free website, specifically meant to host and share her wedding images. The Shutterfly share site allows your bride to upload and share images from her engagement, wedding, and even honeymoon. She and her loved ones can upload videos to the website, as well.
Quick Tip
When you help the bride learn how to best share her wedding photos, you help keep her a fan of yours for life. This is just one of the ways you can encourage clients to become referral magnets for your photography business.
Photo Sharing Apps
Apps are a great way for your bride to share her wedding photos after you deliver them to her. Take a look below at a few photo sharing apps your bride can use.
8. Wedding Photo Swap
As an app that allows you to set up online albums of your images, Wedding Photo Swap is a fun way for your bride to connect with family and friends and share photos from one of the most memorable days of her life. This app allows your bride to upload her images, see images from her loved ones, comment on photos, and even gives her loved ones the opportunity to download the full resolution images.
9. WedPics
The company’s tagline is, “The #1 Photo & Video Sharing App for Your Wedding!” and is an app that allows your bride to upload weddings for free (there is a paid premium option for to enhance the experience). The app has features such as unlimited guests, unlimited downloads, and a custom URL. Your bride can also use the app to order prints, send emails, and deliver important information to her family and friends.
10. Veri
Veri is an app that leaves out the work for your bride’s guests and automatically collects and shares photos and videos on their behalf. This happens through their iPhone or Android cameras and eliminates the need to manually upload every image and video taken from the wedding day. The app captures and shares your bride’s bachelorette party, bridal shower, rehearsal dinner, wedding day, after party, honeymoon, and custom event.
11. Eversnap
This app was voted as “the number one Wedding/Event Photo App by Huffington Post” and it helps your bride capture all wedding images and videos in one album, located online. Eversnap provides your bride with space for her guests’ unlimited high-resolution wedding day images and videos. Your bride will also receive 200 instruction cards for her guests, making it simple to use and understand the app.
12. Moments by Facebook
An app created by Facebook, Moments utilizes face recognition to build a collection of photo albums. These albums allow your bride to share photos from her album (whether that’s on Android or iOS) and allows her loved ones to share photos with her. The great part about this app is that even if the bride’s friends do not have Moments, they will be notified through Facebook messenger that there are photos of them available for view.
13. Google and Apple Photos
For both Androids and iPhones, there is a photo app built-in that can make for a simple sharing option for your bride and her loved ones. Though this does work best if your bride shares from one Android to another, or from one iPhone to another, it is still a great option. With the images stored in her Photos app, your bride can simply follow the instructions for either type of phone and quickly share photos with her family and friends.
File-Sharing Platforms
There are other photo sharing options your bride can choose from, and the next category is file-sharing. File-sharing platforms are online and easily accessible from multiple platforms, including desktop computers, tablets, and mobile devices. Here are a few file-sharing options your bride can use to share her wedding images.
14. Google Drive
Google is a staple for wedding photographers and brides alike and can be used for several organizational purposes. With Google Drive, your bride can create a folder specifically for her wedding images. She can even make subfolders if she wants to separate the different parts of the wedding day. Your bride can give access to her family and friends to edit as needed. This way, your bride can share her photos and also invite her loved ones to share any shots they captured.
15. Dropbox
There are 2 options for sharing images with Dropbox. With Dropbox, your bride can create a folder (or as many as she wants) and upload the images. She can invite her family and friends via email address to view the photos (she can also give them access to edit the folder). Burner, Dropbox’s mobile app, has a special Dropbox Burner Connection that can store the photos your bride’s guests want to share in an easy-to-access folder.
16. Microsoft OneDrive
For your brides who are familiar with Microsoft OneDrive, this is a file-sharing platform she can use to share and view photos from her wedding day. Your bride simply needs to create a folder, add the images to the folder, and share with her family and friends. With this file-sharing platform, your bride can decide on whether she wants the folder to be invite-only or if anyone with the link can access the images.
Other Online Sharing Options
17. Picshare Party
This sharing option for your bride gathers her images into an online gallery by text message. Picshare Party does not require your bride or her family and friends to download an app. Everything is done through text. Your bride’s guests simply need to text the photos they take from her wedding to her gallery’s phone number and her gallery will be updated immediately. This is an ideal option for your bride, especially if she has family or friends who are not comfortable downloading and utilizing an app.
18. USB Drive
This one counts as both online and offline sharing. In earlier years, delivering CDs along with digital files was a popular choice among wedding photographers. Now with updated technology (computers without CD drives), USBs are a simple (and relatively inexpensive) way for you to deliver images to your bride. And the same can be said for her. With the USB drive, she can easily upload the photos onto her computer and share them with her loved ones.
Offline Sharing Options
19. Prints
One of the top ways for your bride to share her wedding photos is to order prints. She can order prints for herself to hang in her home as wall art or to place on her desk at work in a frame. The same can be said for her loved ones. She can include prints in “Thank You” cards she sends after the wedding or she can hand-deliver them to loved ones who live close by. If your packages or A La Carte options include prints, she can order from you to ensure they are full resolution, clear, and beautiful prints.
20. Photo Books
As your bride chooses products to share her wedding images, photo books are a great option for her to share her images. There are a variety of options to create a photo book, and many of them are customizable to the needs of today’s bride. For example, many of your bride’s guests may share the photos they took to Instagram and tag your bride. Instagram has specific size requirements that could make it difficult for traditional photo books to print. For brides who want to print images from Instagram, and keep them the size they appear on the platform, Artifact Uprising creates Instagram Friendly Books. The photo books are perfect for your bride or for her to create for her loved ones.
21. Holiday Cards
Though your bride would typically order holiday cards online, they can be a physical item she delivers (by mail or in person) to her family and friends. Holiday cards are a great way for your bride to share her wedding photos and send holiday wishes to her family and friends. There are several options for ordering holiday cards. Some of those options include holiday cards provided by you (her wedding photographer and someone who can order from a professional lab), Shutterfly, or Vistaprint.
22. Photo Albums
Most wedding photographers provide packages or A La Carte options that include photo albums. Albums are a timeless entity from the wedding that your bride and her loved ones can look at to reminisce and remember the joy of the day. Most brides keep their photo album in their home so when guests come over, they can view it. Your bride can also request that you create an album for them, but also create parent or family member albums (which are typically smaller but still just as meaningful).
When your bride knows the best way to share wedding photos, she can celebrate the day over and over again with her family and friends. As you help her find ways to share the photos, you not only eliminate stress for her, but you also allow her to share your unforgettable images with others who might be in search of a wedding photographer. It is a win-win for everyone involved. Find out additional ways to gain referrals, and to market your wedding photography, with our free Guide to Marketing for Wedding Photographers! Click the banner below to download the guide now.
