How to ask guests not to take photos at your wedding
In a time of mobile phones, social media and the internet, it takes mere seconds to publish something online. Around 300,000,000 photos are uploaded to Facebook every day, as well as over 300 hours of video to YouTube PER MINUTE. This is a lot of online content.
Would you care if someone posted a photo of your wedding before you’d had the chance to? Maybe you wanted to do some kind of social media reveal and a guest has ruined that moment for you. Or what if they tagged you in a particularly unflattering photo? It’s likely that you want the photos that are published to be the ones taken by the professional photographer and published on your terms.
It can be hard to control what your guests put out on social media, but how you ask them to not take photos of your big day and to not publish them online? You want to ask them politely without being seen as a bridezilla.
If you want to ask your guests to not take or publish photos of the day, you’re not alone.
Tell them in advance
The best way to stop your guests from taking too many photos is to give them plenty of notice. This is the kind of detail that could be included in your invitations so that guests are aware of the rule before the day. You could include a short poem on the invite that politely requests the only photos are the ones taken by the photographer, such as:
There’s a photographer here,
We asked her to come,
So put down your phones,
Our wedding only needs one.
You should also let them know whether the rule applies to just the ceremony or the whole day.
Remind them on the day
If you sent your invitations out a few months before the day, it may be worth reminding your guests of the no photos rule. Use a sign that can be hung outside the ceremony rule or put it in their order of service. If you’re having a church wedding, it’s likely that the priest or vicar will remind your guests of this anyway. Some churches are very strict and the officiant may even have rules about the official photographer taking pictures.
Alter your privacy settings
It’s likely that your guests will still be tempted to put some photos of your day on social media. If you’re worried that this will be the case, you could change your privacy settings so that you can’t be tagged in any photos without pre-approving them first. Alter your settings on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter to prevent anyone from seeing the photos appear on your timeline.
Post sneak peek photos
If you want to be the first to announce your wedding day on Facebook with a few photos of you and your new husband and wife in your beautiful outfits, you could ask for a sneak peek from your photographer. This works well if you don’t want to wait months for your wedding photos. They could send these to you to publish on social media shortly after your day. At least these will be published on your terms. And why not change your Facebook relationship status while you’re at it?
