Asking your guests to share to social media during and after your wedding has a lot of pros and not many cons.
For one, in our world of instant gratification it can be difficult to wait weeks (or months) to see the results of your professional wedding pictures. Seeing pictures that your friends posted during and immediately after the wedding can be a nice way to quickly share your wedding with friends who couldn’t make it and also will tide you over until you can see those gorgeous professional pics.
It’s also nice to feel reassured that no moments of your big day will go unremembered while you’re playing hostess and catching up with all of your guests. Your one or two professional photographers are being backed up by dozens of your friends. That way, you’re guaranteed not to miss a thing.
Letting your guests snap a million pictures also gives your multiple perspectives on your big day. You might want a very formal style for your professional photos. But with your friends snapping away, too, you’ll get to see your wedding through their personalities as well and end up with a great array of different styles of photos.
Allowing your guests to take and share photos also lets your guests be involved and encourages them to be more attentive to all the fun moments happening all around them.
On top of all that, hashtagging your wedding is a great way to universally organize your photos across all social media platforms. Have your guests add your hashtag to every photo that they post, not only on Instagram, but also on Twitter, Facebook, and even Pinterest, and it will be infinitely easier to search for wedding photos from all of your guests and make sure that you don’t miss any uploads.
Here are a few tips for using social media on your wedding day:
#GetAHashtag
This will help you and your guests keep track of everyone’s photos from the wedding on Instagram. Type your hashtag into Google to make sure its not already in use; you want it to be original and easy to remember (short is best). Something like #sallywaltersido. It’s totally fine to be a little inventive with your hashtag, but make sure it is memorable enough for guests to easily use. And remember, you can’t use spaces, punctuation or symbols in your hashtag! Numbers and letters only!!
Make a Sign
Have a sign on display that reads “If you Instagram, use hashtag #yourhashtag.” It should be something simple. You don’t need to invest in a professionally designed sign, something as simple as a chalkboard sign is perfect. Additionally, ask your guests to use the hashtag no matter what social site they are posting photos to. Hashtags, once reserved for Instagram, are quickly becoming a commonly used organizational tool across all social platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest.
Multiple Signs
Include the hashtag in your wedding program, or give out cards with the hashtag. And also include your hashtag in an email, so your smartphone-toting guests can easily access the hashtag via mobile if they forget it.
Slideshow
For the digitally savvy, you can set up a slideshow of the Instagram photos at your wedding reception with your hashtag by using the Evenstagram app.
Remember the good times
Share all the photos with your guests and friends online post-wedding by creating a slideshow with Statigram.
Print your images
If you still love the way a photo feels you might want to print your Instagram photos using Printsagram. You can have your photos turned into mini books, calendars or posters. And in case you don’t want to limit the images to just the images you took, have guests email you the original files of the photos that you want to print. Instagram has copyright restrictions, that won’t allow you to print your guests’ photos directly from the platform.
Photo from Not on the High Street