Step 1: Review your photos.
Go through all of them and make sure you're happy with them. Now is the best time to do this – if you wait until a couple years down the road, your photographer might not be able to adjust anything anymore. If there's anything wrong, check in with your photographer! One of my major regrets about my own wedding photos is that I didn't get a photo of my side of the family that I loved... and that I didn't have the nerve to ask my photographer if there was anything we could do until 4 years later. At that point, she didn't have the raws anymore and couldn't help me. Because I had become a wedding photographer myself by then, I was able to use the JPG images from her to put together a family photo I was much happier with – but if I didn't know how to do that, I would have been out of luck altogether. And if I had reached out earlier, she could have helped me create a higher quality image much sooner. If there's something wrong with your photos, reach out to your photographer and see if there's a way to make it right!
the family photo I put together
the family photos we originally received
********DON'T SKIP THIS STEP**********
Step 2: Download them and get them backed up!
This step is one that often doesn't get thought about until it's too late. I got married a couple years before I became a photographer and made some mistakes here:
- only downloaded the photos I liked
- put the photos I downloaded into the free version of google drive, which reduced their quality significantly
- didn't make any additional copies or even finish downloading the final gallery
- didn't pay attention to when my gallery would expire
Luckily for me, my mom was more on top of it than I was. She downloaded all of the photos to her computer, and then when I finally started thinking about them (around my 3rd anniversary...) I was able to make a copy from what she had, and back everything up properly. If I could do it again, here's what I would recommend:
- download ALL the photos – not just the ones you like or the ones you look good in. You'll be surprised how some of them grow on you over the years.
- download them at the highest resolution available to you.
- make sure you have at least 3 copies at full resolution: one on your computer, one on an online cloud service, and one on an external drive, like a flash drive or a hard drive. (It also doesn't hurt to have someone else make a copy too!)
- take note of when the gallery from your photographer will expire, and make sure you've downloaded and backed up everything long before then! This info will usually be in the contract you signed with them, but you can also reach out directly to your wedding photographer and ask them!
Step 3: Enjoy and use your photos!
You've put a lot of time, effort, and money into making sure you have nice wedding photos that will last for generations. Now you just need to figure out what to do with them! My recommendations for where to start include:
- plan a wedding slideshow date night (and then make it an anniversary tradition!) Order some takeout, turn on your wedding playlist, hook your photos up to the big screen, and snuggle up with your partner.
- share your favorites with friends and family. Whether this means making an album on Facebook and tagging every guest, texting your sister your favorites, or mailing a print of your photo with them to your grandparents, your friends and family will be excited to see the photos too!
- plan prints! It can be so hard to actually sit down, plan the prints you want, and then order them – even when it is genuinely something you want to do! (Am I speaking from experience? Yes.) The good news is that this step isn't time sensitive, as long as you've already made sure your photos are safely downloaded and backed up. To make sure it actually happens someday, I recommend either doing it right when you get your photos and are thinking about it, or setting a calendar reminder on your phone (for 1 month from now, for the day you've been married six months, for Valentines Day or Black Friday, or for your next anniversary) and doing it then.
Step 4: review your photographer :)
This step is always optional, but obviously as a photographer myself I'm going to recommend it! It's one of the best ways you can say thank you to your wedding vendors, and helps future clients know what to expect from working with them. If you're one of my couples, here's the link for that!