Collecting
The easy way to collect event photos
Stop chasing guests for pictures. Here is the whole method, in the order it happens, from the link you send to the archive you keep.
Collecting event photographs is a timing problem disguised as a technology problem. Every method that asks guests to do it later loses most of the pictures. The fix is to make the request at the moment people are already looking at their phones.
Why collecting afterwards never works
Send a message the day after asking for photographs and you will get three replies, all from the same enthusiastic friend. It is not rudeness. By the next morning the photographs are buried under everything else that happened on the phone, the guest cannot remember which ones were good, and attaching files to anything feels like work. The window for collecting is the event itself — while the picture is still the most interesting thing on their screen.
Collecting after the fact
- A request in a group chat, answered by whoever was going to help anyway.
- Photographs squeezed by messaging apps before they reach you.
- No record of who has pictures you have not seen.
- Files scattered across threads, inboxes and camera rolls.
- The good ones lost because the person who took them forgot the event existed.
Collecting during the event
- The request is on the table in front of every guest, all evening.
- Files arrive as they left the camera, at full size.
- Each submission is named, so you know whose camera is still closed.
- One place, one archive, one download.
- Nobody has to remember anything, because the ask happened while they were there.
The method, in order
Open the collection the week before
Occasion, hosts, date. Do it early: a collection that exists before the day can take contributions from people who are excited in advance, and it means you are not building anything while wearing your event clothes.
Decide the three settings that matter
Whether guests can browse what has arrived, whether submissions need your approval, and whether the guestbook is open. Everything else can wait until the morning after.
Write the welcome line
The sentence a guest reads before uploading. Two lines of plain instruction beats a paragraph of warmth: what to send, and that it goes to the room's screen if there is one.
Print the QR stands
Four to an A4 sheet from the dashboard, on ordinary paper. One stand per table is the minimum that works; a second at the bar catches the people who never sat down.
Say it out loud
Thirty seconds in the welcome speech, or on the order of the day, or in the message you send the morning. The line is: the code on your table is how your photographs reach us, and they are playing on the screen.
Check the collection twice during the event
Once before the main course, once before the last dance. Approval takes seconds on a phone, and a collection nobody watched stays empty at the edges — the guests who needed encouragement are the ones who send the best pictures.
Download while it is still warm
The week after, not the month after. One archive, every photograph and clip, each of them still credited to its sender in the collection. Then it can close on its own date without you worrying about it.
A collection you check twice during the event gets three times the contributions of one you check once afterwards.
What a collection should hold when it closes
- Every photograph
- The files as they left each guest's camera, not re-squeezed copies. A preview is generated for the grid; the original is what you download.
- The clips
- Video from the same submission, on any plan that takes video. Free Preview does not; Gather takes 30 clips, Celebrate 100, Keepsake 300.
- Names
- Each contribution carries the guest's name, so a photograph you cannot identify has a person you can ask.
- Messages
- Written wishes, and recorded video messages on Celebrate and Keepsake or as an add-on to Gather.
- Nothing you refused
- If you used approval, rejected submissions are excluded from the archive. What you kept is what you get.
Chasing the people who have not sent anything
There is always a group who took photographs and sent none: the couple who arrived late, the guest who does not trust QR codes, the family who left before the speeches. A reminder is worth sending, and it should be one message with the address in it rather than a second and third request in a chat.
- Send it two or three days after, when phones have been cleaned out but the event is still recent.
- Include the address as text, not only as a picture of the code — the people who never scanned it will not scan it now.
- Name what you are after. 'The photographs from the beach walk' beats 'any pictures'.
- Say when the collection closes, because a date is the only reason anyone does a favour like this promptly.
- Accept that some will not send anything, and be glad about the eighty who did.
Reminders go to the guests whose email you have, which on this platform means the people who already contributed. For everyone else, the address in a normal message is the faster route.
What it costs to collect this way
Guests never pay and never register. The host pays for capacity and time: how many photographs the collection will hold, whether it takes video, how long it stays online and what quality you can download. The free plan runs a real event for seven days with 20 photographs and ten contributors, which is the cheapest way to find out whether your guests will actually use it.
- Preview — free, 7 days, 20 photographs, 10 contributors, no video or downloads.
- Gather — $19, six months, 200 photographs and 30 videos, unlimited contributors, written guestbook, downloads.
- Celebrate — $39, twelve months, 750 photographs and 100 videos, video guestbook, live slideshow, a look at each submission before it shows, original-quality downloads.
- Keepsake — $69, twenty-four months, 2,000 photographs and 300 videos, premium themes, extra managers.
When the room has no signal
Barns, cellars, tents and the back rooms of restaurants are all perfectly good venues with one problem: forty guests standing in a stone box, each with two bars of nothing. Collecting still works there, but the sequence changes, and hosts who do not know that give up on the method after an empty first hour.
Ask before the signal does
Make the request during the meal rather than after the dancing starts. Guests are seated, their phones are out, and most of them still have whatever cache of photographs they took arriving and during the drinks.
Let people upload on their own timing
A submission page that will not load is not a lost photograph. The pictures stay in the guest's camera roll, and the address stays in their browser history or their messages, so the upload happens in the car, at the hotel, or on the drive home. Nothing about collecting requires the venue's wifi.
Put one stand somewhere central
With no signal, people move toward where they think the connection is — the hall door, the bar, the cloakroom. A stand at that pinch point gets scanned by everyone who walks past it twice.
Expect the collection to fill in the two days after
A room with no wifi collects slowly on the night and quickly on the weekend. Judge the collection on Monday rather than at midnight, and leave the slideshow running rather than assuming the evening produced nothing.
Video is the first casualty of a weak connection
A short clip is a heavier upload than a photograph, so on a poor signal the stills land and the clips do not. If the filmed toast matters, ask for it directly in the message you send afterwards — one person in a hotel lobby with good wifi will send it in thirty seconds.
Collecting video from guestsCollecting when you are not the one hosting
Planners, venue coordinators, photographers, and the sibling who organised everything without anyone agreeing to it, all end up collecting photographs for somebody else. The mechanics are the same; the etiquette is not.
- Wedding and event planners
- You are holding somebody else's memories, so the two settings that matter are approval on and the gallery hidden from guests unless the couple asked for it. Hand the archive over as one download at the handover meeting, and let the collection close on its own date rather than keeping it alive in your account.
- Venues and coordinators
- A stand on the tables is a service the venue provides, and the collection belongs to the host. Create the collection in the host's name and send them the address before the doors open, so the first contribution is theirs to see rather than yours to forward.
- Photographers
- Guest photographs are not competition — they are the shots you could not be in. A second angle of the first dance from row nine is the frame you will be asked for in the edit, and asking the room to upload costs you thirty seconds during the setup.
- The family member doing everything
- The person who sets this up is usually not the person who owns the photographs. Put the collection in the host's account if you can, and if you cannot, download the archive and hand it over rather than letting a collection close inside your login.
The morning after
Open it before you clear the tables
Whatever is still on the guest's phone tonight is on their phone now. Look at the collection the next morning, while the room is fresh, and you will notice the gap — nobody sent the ceremony, nobody sent the garden.
Decide the rejects quickly
If you used approval, work through the waiting pile in one pass. Blurs, floors and elbows go; anything a person would be pleased about stays. Ten minutes, and the album is finished.
Send one reminder, with the gap named
Not 'please send photos' but 'we have nothing from the speeches — if you filmed any of it, the link is here'. Specific asks get specific files.
Download once, properly
Take the whole archive rather than picking through the gallery for individual files. Save it somewhere that is not the only place it exists, and keep the file names, because they carry who sent what.
Write down the closing date
Then you can stop thinking about it. The collection will come down on its own, and the warning mail will remind you if you have not downloaded — which is the only failure mode worth guarding against.
The collection is not finished when the event ends. It is finished when you have the files and the last guest has sent theirs.
Collecting, answered briefly
How do I get photographs from guests who will not use technology?
You do not ask them to. A printed stand does the asking: they point a camera at it, the page opens, they choose pictures and press send. The only technology required is the one they already used to take the photographs.
Can I collect photos before the event?
Yes, and it is worth doing for the people who cannot come. A collection accepts contributions from the moment it opens, so a message or a photograph from far away lands in the same archive.
What if two guests took the same photograph?
Keep both, or reject one if you use approval. Duplicate frames from different angles are usually worth keeping — a wedding photograph of the couple kissing has six versions and they are not the same photograph.
Is there a limit to how many guests can contribute?
Ten on the free plan. Unlimited on every paid plan, which is the main reason a wedding of 120 guests needs one.
Do I have to approve everything?
Only if you switch approval on. With it off, submissions go straight into the gallery and onto the room slideshow. Hosts who know their room turn it off; hosts with a mixed crowd and a projector turn it on.
How many photographs should I expect from a hundred guests?
It varies more than is useful to promise, so nobody honest will give you a number. What does predict it is the number of tables with a stand on them and whether anybody said the link out loud. Two hundred files from a wedding of that size is unremarkable; so is sixty, and the difference is usually the announcement.
Can I collect photographs without letting guests see each other's?
Yes. Turn the public gallery off and the guest page becomes an upload page. You still see everything, and the room can still watch the slideshow if you want it to — the slideshow and the guest gallery are separate switches.
What is the difference between the archive and the individual downloads?
The archive is the whole collection in one file, which is what you want for keeping and handing over. Individual downloads are for the one photograph somebody asks for in March. Both come from the same stored originals.
Open the collection before the event, not after
That is the whole trick. Everything else — the stands, the link, the reminders — is easier when the collection already exists.
Event photo sharing
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.