Parties specifically
A party fills a gallery in one hour, if you plan for that hour
No seating plan, no photographer, no speeches and nobody sitting down: the method that works at a birthday, a barbecue or a house party is a narrower one than the wedding version, and it is still cheaper than a chat thread.
A party is a worse environment for collecting photographs than a wedding, and it is worth knowing why before you copy the advice written for a wedding onto a barbecue. Nobody sits for twenty uninterrupted minutes, so there is no quiet window in which a guest reads a card. There is no running order, so there is no moment when the whole room faces one direction and can be told something. There is no professional photographer whose presence makes the guests feel that photographs are being handled. What a party has instead is one or two peaks — the candles, a toast, the game somebody organised, the garden at nine o'clock — and a room full of people standing with phones already in their hands. The method below is built around those peaks rather than around the evening as a whole, because at a party that is where the entire collection is won or lost.
What a party does differently
Nobody is seated long enough to read anything
A card on a table at a house party is looked at by whoever is waiting for a coaster. Surfaces that work are the ones people hold or pass twice: the fridge door, the bar, the paper on the table where the food is.
The peak lasts four minutes
Candles, a toast, the announcement, the sparklers. Every phone in the room is up for those four minutes and none of them are up an hour later. Whatever you want collected, ask for it immediately before the peak rather than immediately after.
There is no official record to lean on
At a wedding a guest assumes the photographer has it covered. At a party the same guest assumes nobody has it covered, which is why the material is more willing to be shared and less likely to arrive anywhere organised.
The room changes shape all evening
Kitchen, garden, sofa, street. A single printed stand at one position catches one group. Two positions catch most of the party, which is the cheapest fix available to you.
Half the contributors leave early
The parents with children, the ones who came for an hour, the friend who had a shift in the morning. Their photographs are the ones the morning-after message retrieves, and without that message they never arrive.
The hour that decides the whole set
Two hours before
Open the collection and print a spare sheet
Setup is minutes: the occasion, the date, one line of welcome text naming what you want, and four stands on one sheet of ordinary paper. Put the spare sheet somewhere you will find it in the dark.
As people arrive
Say it once, to whoever is nearest
Not a speech — parties do not have those. A sentence to the first four arrivals, with the address in the group message you send anyway, is what makes the request real before the room fills.
Ten minutes before the peak
The one ask that works
Before the candles, not after. Say what you would like to have afterwards — the faces during the singing, the present somebody will regret, the garden at night — and put a code within reach of where it will happen.
The last half hour
The door and the coats
The highest-yield position at any party. A guest leaving with a good evening behind them will scan a code on their way past, and their camera roll is the one with forty frames in it.
The method, in the order it works
Choose a plan with room for video
Parties produce far more moving footage than a couple expects: toasts, games, dancing in a kitchen. The allowance for clips is the number to look at, not the photograph count, and the free collection holds no video at all.
Write one specific line in the welcome text
Every contributor reads it at the moment of decision. Naming the cake, the games and the garden gets you those photographs; asking for memories gets you the same three frames everybody already posted.
Print four stands and use three positions
The food table, the bar or drinks surface, and the door. At a party in somebody's home, the fridge door is the position nobody expects to work and it works better than the coffee table.
Put the link in the message you send anyway
Every party has a group message about arriving, parking or what to bring. One line added to that message outperforms anything printed, because it reaches the people who are not in the room yet.
Say it once, near the peak, to the whole room
Thirty seconds standing up with a drink in your hand. It is not a formal announcement and it does not need to be; the room is quiet enough for exactly one sentence and that is all the method requires.
Take the download in the first week
Every photograph and clip as it arrived, in one archive, numbered in arrival order. A party collection left until the end of its period is a collection somebody has to remember to rescue.
Where a code goes at a party
- The food, twice
- People pass the table with a plate and stand there for two minutes reading anything. At a buffet or a barbecue this is the only surface with a captive audience.
- The drinks, wherever they actually are
- Not the bar you built for the photographs — the kitchen worktop where everybody ends up. The most-used surface in the house is a decision you can only make on the night.
- The door, on the way out
- Coats, shoes, last cigarette. A guest at the door has their phone, their whole evening's footage and thirty seconds before a taxi.
- The garden or the terrace rail
- Taped to a rail at eye height, a code catches the standing group that never went back inside. It will weither by midnight, which is why the spare sheet exists.
- The television, for twenty seconds
- A slideshow running on the living-room screen between songs produces more contributions than every printed card combined. Whoever owns the television is the person to ask first.
What to ask for, in words a room repeats
- The faces during the candles rather than the candles themselves.
- Whatever game somebody organised, filmed from the side nobody played.
- The garden, the street or the kitchen at the end of the night.
- The thirty seconds before and after the arrival of the person the party is for.
- Anything the host was too busy to see, said exactly like that.
- A short message for the guestbook from the people who will not photograph anything.
Six asks is too many to say out loud. Choose two for the spoken sentence and keep the rest for the welcome text on the page.
Children, grown-ups and two rooms at once
At a children's party, ask the adults
The contributors are parents standing at the edge of the room with excellent cameras and nothing to do for ten minutes. The message that goes to the class group does the work; a card on a children's table does nothing at all.
At a house party, one guest is the collector
Identify them before the night and give them the address. The person who films everything will retrieve from other phones as well, which is the only way a party collects from the group that never went online.
Two rooms means two asks
A birthday with a afternoon of children and an evening of adults is two audiences with different devices. The same address serves both; the sentence you say has to be said twice.
Some guests will not put a phone away
At a party with teenagers, most of the footage exists on devices that were never intended for you. A short message afterwards naming what you want retrieves a surprising amount, because the file was already in front of them.
The morning after, which is half the collection
Send one message, before noon
The party is the most interesting thing in their phone that morning and by the following week it is not. One message with the link, one thank-you, and the date the collection closes.
Name the two gaps you can already see
Nobody sent the arrival, nobody sent the garden. A specific request retrieves a specific file from a specific camera roll, and at a party the footage is scattered across twenty phones.
Ask the early leavers privately
The parents, the ones with a shift, the group who left at ten. A personal message with the address in it gets forty frames; the group chat gets a reply with a laughing emoji.
Take the archive once the set is finished
One download, everything as it arrived, plus individual files for the frames you want on their own. Parties produce duplicates at a rate weddings do not, so sort them that weekend rather than in March.
What the free collection is genuinely good for
- Testing the printed card
- Four stands, one scan, one upload from your own phone. It tells you what a guest sees and whether the wording works, which is the part most people guess at and get wrong.
- A very small party
- Twenty photographs and ten contributing guests covers a dozen people in a kitchen. Past that, a birthday that runs into the night fills it before the cake.
- Nothing involving video
- The free collection takes photographs only, and no clips or messages of either kind, so the two things a party produces most of are exactly what it cannot hold.
- Nothing you want to keep
- There are no downloads at that level and it comes down after seven days. Everything from a good evening that you intend to still have is on a paid collection, priced once per event.
A party has one quiet moment in it. Everything you want photographed happens in the four minutes around it.
The questions people ask before a party
Is a group chat good enough for a party?
For twenty photographs between twelve friends who all want them this week, yes. For clips that survive, contributors credited beside their frames, and anything you want in a year, no — a chat squeezes video first and scatters the rest.
Do my guests need to install anything?
No. The code opens a browser page on the phone already in their hand and they give their name once. Nothing to register for and no price shown at any level.
How much footage will a party of thirty produce?
More than a wedding of the same size, per guest, because nobody is waiting for a photographer. Plan by the clip allowance rather than the photograph allowance and leave room to buy more.
Should I ask at the start or the end of the night?
Immediately before the peak, when people still have the intention and the moment is upcoming rather than past. A request at the end relies on every guest having something to send, which they do not until the last hour.
What about the photographs of other people's children?
Set the gallery to upload-only and decide who the address goes to. At a children's party that is usually the parents only, and it is a switch on the settings rather than a conversation you have to have afterwards.
Can we see entries before the whole room does?
Yes. Approval is a switch on the collection settings and it starts off. Turn it on when a screen is running the gallery, and a submission waits until you accept it.
Does this work outdoors or in a pub?
The address works wherever the phone has a signal, so guests can send on the walk home or from the table the next day. A printed card in a pub is the weakest surface in this whole method; the message you send anyway is stronger.
What happens to the collection when it closes?
Warning mail arrives first, and after it comes down the archive you downloaded is the only copy. At a party that is the one step people reliably forget, because there was no formal plan to forget.
Set it up before the candles, not after
Open a collection, write one line about what you would like to keep, print two sheets of stands and put the link in the message you were going to send anyway.
Guides and comparisons
Put one link on the tables and let everyone contribute.
Create a collection, print the table stands, and the photographs your guests took are waiting for you the morning after. Guests never install anything and never make an account.