YOU HAVE ALL YOUR WEDDING PICTURES!! So, now what? Here are some ideas to enjoy your wedding photos and soak up those memories to the fullest!
// FIRST
Let’s start with the “not-as-fun” first step — BACK THOSE BABIES UP. I send all my wedding galleries through an online digital album, which is AMAZING and super easy to use — but doesn’t last forever. So, your first job is to download all the images and make sure they’re stored in several safe spots so you can enjoy them years and years and years down the road. Some ideas for that are: external hard drives (yep, multiple), Google Drive, iCloud, and HECK you can even out them on discs (if you even have a disc drive on your computer that is haha).
Once these are all safe and sound in multiple backed up spots, you can now start thinking of the fun and creative ways to use and enjoy your wedding photographs!
Alrighty, let’s go!
// PRINTS
Time to chat all things prints! Printing your wedding photos can look like SO many different things! I just want to give you a few of my favorite ways that I’ve personally done and love. Even though we live in an age of digital photography, I am still a firm believer in printing - there’s something so special about having something tangible to look at or flip through.
I feel like I look at and enjoy my wedding photos SO MUCH MORE because I’ve chosen to print them in several different ways. They don’t just all stay hidden in a folder until we look though them on our anniversary (although that is fun to do too)!
SO, HERE ARE MY 3 FAVORITE WAYS TO USE PRINTS…
I. PRINTING ALBUMS
ALBUMS ARE AMAZING. I ordered an album of our wedding photos almost immediately after we got them! I personally love building the visual story of the day, so putting together an album allowed me to sit and piece together favorite snippets of my own memories from the day. And, this lil’ book sits on our coffee table where we can easily grab it and be sparked back to all the goodness of our wedding day. I look at my wedding photos WAY more because of this tiny square book!
I use Pic-Time to deliver all my galleries, and through them there is a SUPER EASY way to order albums straight from your gallery! You just select all your fave moments and boom, build away! Even if you want to hint to family about a great B-day or Christmas gift, just sent them to your gallery with some suggestions! ;)
We LOVE LOVE LOVE albums so much that we have one for our wedding photos AND one for our engagement photos!! Sooooo many sweet memories.⭣
II. FRAMING PRINTS
I LOVE PRINTING PHOTOS.
I’m honestly running out of wall space for all the memories I want to nail everywhere!
Once you’ve narrowed it down to a few favorite images (it’s hard, I know), think about ordering normal prints of those to frame! I love thrifting, so I always look for unique frames when thrifting because I love printing photographs. Once you have the sizes you want, you could create a gallery wall with images, or just have a few stand alone moments. Making my home feel like “us” is super important to me. So, printing these memories to put around feels like adding our story to this space.
Scroll all the way to the bottom to see a list of printers that I LOVE ordering from! ⭣
III. SQUARE PRINTS
This is a “just for fun” kind of print I love to get! I love ordering packs of square prints, you can get several different sizes and you usually order them in a bundle! I like doing it this way because there are so many fun, creative ways to display these kinds of prints — on the fridge in a collage, fill a frame full of them, or create a cool hanging piece (the one I made below is from a piece of driftwood we found on a date we took several years ago). I even have a pack of “fun memories” prints on my desk — it’s a bundle of moments from this past summer. I think collections like these are a unique way to savor and look through certain seasons of life.
Both Artifact Uprising and Parabo Press have amazing square print options! Use my code UCVMNC at Parabo for $10 off!
Try out this fun way of printing!
You can see there are so many fun ways to print your photos so that you are tangibly seeing those memories on a daily basis!
A few other fun tangible things you can do with your wedding photos (which actually make incredible gifts for family members — especially that first year): you could make a calendar, a “first year married” Christmas, print on a mug, etc. The list for printing really goes on and on!
// SHARE DIGITALLY
You can’t ignore that we do live in a very digital age, and so there is no shame in sharing the images digitally as well. Friends and family definitely will be excited about this as well! So, I want to share 3 reasons why I love sharing digitally!
I. FOR FRIENDS + FAM. I rarely use Facebook, but I did create a wedding album with a huge grouping of my favorite moments from throughout the wedding day. It was a fun (and easy) way to share with friends and family, and it made me excited to invite them all into the reminiscing alongside me.
II. FOR MY OWN BACK UP AND STORYTELLING. It also feels like an extra backup to save a grouping of them in an album I’m creating.
III. IT MEANS THE WORLD TO YOUR PHOTOGRAPHER. Lastly, it seriously means the WORLD to your photographer to see you excitedly sharing the pictures. As a wedding photographer, I am so so so overjoyed when I see my couples sharing their wedding photos on Facebook and Instagram — it affirms me that they truly see themselves in the memories and feel the emotions of the day again, and they want to invite all their friends and family to relive those moments alongside them.
Because I have a JOURNAL space on here, I’ve also created a tiny blogpost to share the story of our wedding day. IT WAS SO FUN TO MAKE. So, if you have a blog, or journal, or whatever space that you collect memories and stories, I highly recommend doing this! It helped me process through the day and all the feelings that came with it! ⭣
// ENJOY THEM — make a night out of it
Maybe it’s the FIRST time you’re looking through your whole gallery, maybe it’s your one year anniversary, or maybe it’s years down the road and you’re showing your kids the story of your wedding day. Whatever it is — make space to enjoy them. Set aside time to go and really soak up the moments that each image has captured. Grab wine, make your favorite meal (or get thai take out haha), and cozy up to go down memory lane for one of the most special days.
In the end, the photographs are spark back all those memories — how hot and sweaty the day was and we all laughed and stood in front of fans, what it felt like to hug my mom after I put my dress on, when I saw Josiah’s face at the first look and we both started cry-laughing, the smiles of everyone watching us say our vows… our people. PHEW (cue the tears) haha. I’m just so grateful for the power and beauty of a photograph.
So, be sure you make time to savor your them.
MY FAVORITE PRINTING COMPANIES…
// PARABO PRESS (use code UCVMNC)
// ARTIFACT UPRISING (ask me to send you a code)
// ZNO
//PIC-TIME (through your gallery)
ps. shout out to our AMAZING wedding photographer, Olivia Strohm! She’s incredible and we have the photos she captured ALL OVER OUR HOUSE. xx
