Your wedding will likely be the most photographed day of your life. After your vows are spoken, your rings are exchanged, the cake is eaten, and you’ve all danced the night away, your day will live on forever in your wedding photos. Now that you’ve invested all this time, energy, money, and love into celebrating your wedding and immortalizing it on film in pixels, one question remains: What to do with your wedding photos?

Unsurprisingly, I have a lot of opinions on this subject. Enough opinions that this is a 2-part post! The last thing I (or any other photographer) want is for your beautiful wedding images to get lost in the depths of a random folder on your computer or a USB hidden in a drawer. You and your photos deserve better than that! One of the happiest days of your life should be loved and shared and enjoyed over and over again, and that’s highly unlikely to happen if your photos remain stored away as digital files. So, read on, friend, because I’m sharing what to do with your photos so that you and your family and friends can enjoy your wedding photos and relive your epic day every damn day!

What to do with your wedding photos

BACK. THEM. UP.

Step 1 after receiving your wedding photos is to back them up. You don’t have to go as crazy backing up your images as I do (So. Many. Hard drives.), but I recommend at least backing up to an external hard drive or flash drive and definitely having a cloud back-up (Dropbox and Google Drive are great for this). Your photographer may not always have your files on hand or may charge a fee to retrieve archived files, so make sure you have multiple copies so you don’t lose anything!

Share them!

Your family and guests want to see your photos. They want to relive the magic with you and see catch up on anything they missed! Whether you’re creating an album in Facebook or Google, sharing non-stop on Instagram, or sharing your online gallery or blog post directly from your photographer, they’ll enjoy seeing the magic you all made and appreciate that you shared this with them!

Thank you cards!

Ask your photographer if they will share any sneak peeks with you to use an image or two on/in your thank you cards! This is a great way to personalize your cards and share a favorite image from your wedding! Just make sure your dog doesn’t eat the cards before you have a chance to send them…yes, that happened to us. Thanks a lot, Bark Vader.

Gift them!

There’s a reason most of us photographers refer to 8×10″, 5×7″, and 4×6″ prints as “gift prints”! These sizes are perfect for gifting to parents, grandparents, siblings, and even members of your wedding party! Frames are readily available, and these prints are a great way to say thank you to the family and friends who stood next to you and helped make your wedding day amazing!

Part 2 will be up soon, and it will be all about my favorite ways to print and display your wedding photos, so keep your eyes peeled! In the meantime, I’d love to hear your favorite ways to share your photos, so post them in the comments below!