Weddings are one of the rare chances people have where they are able to get all their closes friends and family, work colleagues, distant relatives and in-laws all together in one place; thus creating some excellent photo opportunities. With everyone all dressed up looking lovely, a prized venue for a backdrop and flowers everywhere, people just cannot help taking pictures. Yet it can often be difficult to accurately capture the true feel of the wedding and its guests while still having gorgeous photos that last. Having been to many weddings myself I have noticed there are more and more inventive ways to make sure you get both, so here are a few of the best:
Disposable
I personally love a disposable camera, I think their simplicity is fantastic and they seem to make everyone look good. For weddings then they seem like the perfect way to capture some of the fun after the ceremony, and provide some hilarious evidence for years to come without any real effort or cost.
However, something easily overlooked are the development prices. On average you would expect to spend around £7 if not more on developing one camera alone, so if you have ten cameras you will be paying an additional £70 on developing the pictures, plus the cost of buying those 10 (expect to pay around £35 on eBay)
Instax
Again a great idea in theory, makes for great fun at the reception and I have seen a board where people could stick their pictures up throughout the evening at one wedding which was really lovely. However, Instax cameras are not especially cheap, and with their fun design it may be difficult to prize them away from the children (or drunken grown-ups!).
Photo booth
Which brings us nicely on to the very popular photo booth! Here you solve the problem of the above as you are guaranteed good quality photos and nobody is going to chase the kids around to get the cameras back! You can either rent a photo booth which costs from around £250 upwards, or DIY. By renting a booth you take a lot of the hassle out of the organisation and setting up, as well as the developing admin afterwards.
However, to bring down the cost doing it yourself is actually very easy! It is crucial to have a DSLR, preferably one with remote shutter facilities too. A Canon DSLR or Nikon DSLR are the most popular and can easily be bought or leased from various outlets for the big day. Then you will need to have a suitable backdrop, which could be as simple as a white wall!
Professional
If you have a good relationship with your photographer you can always discuss the option of having them stay on for the reception and capture your guests more candidly, though this will probably have to come at an additional cost. This is great idea to ensure continuity in your wedding photos, and to ensure that there are at least one or two decent photos from the reception!
The drawback with this is that having someone unknown taking photos may inhibit your guests and so this may not capture the true personality of your wedding. Plus, with your photographer not being involved it is easy to miss a lot of great photo ops. By using a photo booth as mentioned above you can ensure that the reception photography is of great quality but also that your guests can act natural and celebrate true to form.
Social Media
This is one of the easiest ways to ensure that you get to see photos of your guests at your reception. By creating a specific hashtag your guests can use when uploading your pictures you ensure that you can find them all in one place. However, some people may not be using the same social media platforms or may forget the hashtag, or not get around to ever putting the lovely photos up!
An alternative to this that I recently found out about is Wedpics, a really useful app that allows guests to upload their pictures straight to a gallery using a unique ID. You can then print any of these that you like! A great idea is to send the unique code out with the invitations so if anyone feels like snapping pictures from that point onwards related to your wedding you can add it to the scrapbook!
So if you are planning your wedding, or want to make sure the next wedding you go to has some great memories to cherish, these ideas promise great photo opportunities! Have you been to a wedding where you have loved their memory creating ideas? Tell me about it in a comment below!
