So, if you’re anything like me and you think your 7 year old niece can take more interesting pictures than a wedding photographer, you might dig what I’m about to propose. It’s simple really…request that your guests bring digital cameras to the “big day”, and ask them all to take tons of pictures! I personally think you’re gonna get a wealth of unique wedding photos out of this method.

Ok, at this point I’m gonna come right out and confess that I didn’t come up with this idea. It’s been used quite a bit at weddings. The difference is that when used in the past, most of the time it was disposable cameras that were given to the guests. This is a no-no for two big reasons:

1. Those cameras are throw away! Green weddings mean avoiding just those two, anti-environmental words: “throw away”.

2. Giving your guests crappy little cameras that they have little to no control over or familiarity with is not the way to get them to take good looking or interesting pictures.

Digital cameras are so common now-a-days that it’s not an unreasonable request to ask people to bring them. Heck, half the guests bring them whether you ask them to or not! So why not avoid paying a photographer if you like the idea of spontaneous photos that aren’t staged?

Now, when it comes to the task of actually getting those digital photos from your guests, there are a few ways to go about this. One method would be to set up an online form where people can upload their photos to you. It can be hosted at a private url so that only your guests have access to it. Leave little slips of paper at each guest table that contain information on how and where they can share their photos from the day.

Or, if you want to go cheap and avoid all that techno mumbo-jumbo, perhaps set up a Flickr group that your guests can become members of and share their photos with you that way. Flickr hosts all the photos (for free), and when shared, they’re lumped into a nice wedding flickr group for all to view afterwards! I dunno about you but I love actually being able to see the wedding pictures after I’ve been to one, and yet that so rarely happens unless you visit the newly weds and basically request to see their album.

These are just a few of many possible ways to go about retrieving digital photos from your guests. Please share if you know of other convenient online locations where photos can be easily and cheaply shared! I’d love to learn about and share those locations as well!

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