What to do with Great Wedding Photos
This is the final blog post in our How to Get Great Wedding Photos series, and it details what to do with great wedding photos. If you have been given the digital files, what should you do with them to ensure the memories of your wedding day are safe for generations to come. Now that you have made it this far in the series your only problem should be: What to do with great wedding photos?
1. Store your digital files away
The reality is that computers fail, external hard drives fail, and memory cards fail and therefore you need to implement your backup strategy as quickly as you can following the capture of your photos. Even the cloud can fail! Also, one of the newer problems this generation has been the constant replacement of technology. 10 years ago all wedding photos were stored on CDs and DVDs; now most laptops and desktops are not built with a CD/DVD player. After spending money on wedding photographer, please do not leave them in the digital nebulas and interwebs. When family members dig through your attic, old broken hard drives with wedding photos will be useless.
Here we cover the topic of How to Keep your Wedding Photos Safe.
The major principle to take away about maintaining the safety of your precious wedding images (digital files) is to have two copies that are stored in two seperate places and to update these storage sources as technology changes. The only way to truely remain future proof is to utilise the power of print.
2. Prints
The power of prints starts here. If you like only one or if you like a hundred of your wedding photos, you should cherish them by printing them and putting them on display.
The Most Photographed Generation Will Have No Pictures in 10 Years!
If you have hired a professional wedding photographer, ask them to professionally print your very favourite images so that you can display them around your house and office. Photographers can create archival prints which last a minimum of 75 years without fading. These are archival prints are usually done on cotton rag, not plastic like most commercial prints. Once you have felt an archival print you will start to understand why it lasts so long and what a quality print actually feels like.
If you haven’t hired a professional photographer you still have not excuse. With prints as cheap as 10c there is no budget too small to prevent you from printing at your local Kmart or Big W and putting these prints into a frame. To get a maximum life span out of your prints, store/display them out of direct sunlight.
3. Wall Art
Wall Art includes large framed prints, canvases, acrylic or metal prints larger than a 14×11 inch size. Your professional photographer will have access to professional printing houses that are reserved for photographers, ie. the general public do not have access. This means that if you want a higher quality product, more likely to stand the test of time, both from a quality of manufacture and prevention of fading of the image, you will need to engage a professional photographer to have these items created for you.
There is no better way to keep the memories of your wedding day alive than to put some wall art around your home. If you can’t afford a quality product at this stage, have some larger scale prints done at a retail store, place in a frame, and hand on your wall. You can achieve this for well under $50. Then, as long as you have stored your digital files properly you can upgrade to some professional wall art at a later date when you have the funds available. Don’t wait to put up a professional print, put something up now.
4. Wedding Album
Many couples we have met still have their disc of wedding photos in a desk and never get around to putting together their album. By having an album professionally designed by your photographer and manufactured you will be guaranteed to have a family heirloom forever. Photographers have access to printing manufacturers that the general public do not. Photographers are able to provide a much higher quality product to ensure your album stands the test of time.
If you can’t afford an album, make your own. The process of choosing photos to print might help you re-live all the excitement of your wedding. You may never go through the 1,000 digital images that you have on your hard drive, but you’ll cherish your album for years to come.
5. Slideshow
This is something that will cost you nothing but your time and access to a computer. Grab your favourite images, open your photo viewer, such as iPhoto, Windows Movie Maker, or any of the other free photo slideshow software options in this blog.
Then share the completed slideshow movie via email or social media to your friends and family. Keep a copy of the finished file with the rest of your wedding photos to ensure it doesn’t get lost. You now have your great wedding photos in a smaller digital package to relive at another date.
6. Thank-you cards
Pick your favourite image to make your own thank you cards. I love Canva for creating cards. It is an awesome free software to create the digital file you will need to send to a printer such as Vistaprint. You simply upload your photo, drag and drop the message you want onto the photo or in inside of your card and then save the file.
7. Social Media
Ask your photographer to share at least one photo from your wedding on your wedding day. This way family and friends that weren’t able to make it can also see something from the day. It is also important to let people at the wedding know when it is OK to post photos that they take from the wedding. Many of my brides say that they use the first post on the wedding day by the photographer as the sign that anyone can post from that point onto social media.
If you use Facebook, pick your favourite wedding images and place them in a virtual album. This way you can easily share your top photos with those that you love and it will be easy to find the album long after your daily funny cat posts fill your timeline.
8. Blog Posts
If you have your own personal blog, then it seems ideal to post the story of your wedding day. If you don’t have your own blog, ask if your photographer will be blogging about your wedding day? Perhaps your venue may also want to blog? Just make sure that any images you send for outside blog posts have been accredited to your photographer and they have released copyright for publication.
9. Gifts
Who helped you organise or pay for your wedding? Did a family member help to set up the church or reception venue? Utilising your photos is a great way to thank people that put in an effort to assist in making it a great wedding day.
- Framed desk size prints with photos of you and the person that you are thanking is ideal
- Prints for your grandparents, preferably one of those non creative photos such as you and your husband looking straight at the camera. Even better if you put it in a magnetic frame (available at most camera and department stores) that can stick to their fridge.
- Prints, parent albums, and wall art work best for parents.
10. Consider a Trash the Dress Shoot
Also known as a Rock the Frock session is a photoshoot well after your wedding day in which the location is likely to cause your wedding gown to get wet, dirty, or destroyed. How far you want to push the session is up to you – most sessions can still have a clean gown after dry cleaning. Some however, will never be worn again.
These sessions can be a lot of fun and a good way to get a set of photos that reflect your personality or hobbies. These can be done with or without your husband. In the session below, we started with getting wet under a small waterfall to paint being thrown at one another. It was an awesome day out with this amazing Italian/Mexican couple.
In the first photo you can see some of our 30min steep walk down to get to the waterfall. Then the water session followed by the paint session.
What do with Great Wedding Photos – Summary
If you still are looking for some more ideas, check out the is blogpost by Offbeat Bride: What do you do with your wedding photos after the wedding?
The finalises our How to Get Great Wedding Photos series. If you missed any of these posts you can find them below:
How to Get Great Wedding Photos – Part 1 – Before the Wedding
How to Get Great Wedding Photos – Part 2 – Getting Ready
How to Get Great Wedding Photos – Part 3 – The Ceremony
A very useful tip here. Also, you’ve got a nice set of album photos too.
I do agree with all of the ideas you’ve presented in your post. They are very convincing and will certainly work. Still, the posts are too short for starters. Could you please extend them a bit from next time? Thanks for the post.