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Here's my question. What did you do with your photos after the wedding? Do you have them up in your house? Do you have an album? If you have an album, do you get it out and look at it regularly? … I mean, I could put one or two up, but I live in a small apartment and I don't want to turn it into a wedding theme park.
–Rhubarb
Frame 'em
Ah, the obvious answer. I, too, live in an apartment and I was conscious of not wanting to turn our small space into some kind of wedding altar. We have a framed photo on a bedside table, and a series of photos hung in a funky frame on the wall. But I found that a digital frame was an excellent way to display ALL my favorite wedding pics without looking wedding obsessed. 😉
Photo albums
As far as “how often do you look at your wedding album?” Well, it varies. I know a couple that made a coffee table book of their wedding photos and it lives on their, well, coffee table. And, since it's right in front of their guests, it gets broken out and thumbed through a lot. I have an album that I made that lives on my shelf and I never look at it. Luckily it was just put together using the actual prints that my photographer gave to us.
Cards
Your favorite wedding photo (or photos) make great personalized holidays cards. You could also use them for all your thank you cards. What if you eloped, or had a small wedding and want to make announcements? Do it with a wedding photo.
Gifts
The Christmas after I got married EVERYONE got a special wedding photo — my dad got a framed photo of him walking me down the aisle, my mom and parents-in-law got personalized albums focused on their sides of the family, my best friends got pics of all of us together, etc.
Art
The great thing about professional photos is that the quality is so great that you can enlarge your pictures and make big pieces of art to hang on the wall. This photo cluster on canvas was created and displayed by photographer Daniel Boone.
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I love this because it's a bit funkier than a framed photo and clustering canvas prints together can create a really cool artistic “moment” in a room. I love the juxtaposition of the detail shot (shoes) with the portraits. I've also seen couples blow up their favorite wedding photo to be the large art piece over their fireplace.
Publish 'em
Here's our favorite option — submit a bride profile to be considered for a wedding feature on Offbeat Bride! Or, if your wedding went the more traditional route, see if your photographer will submit your photos to wedding magazines so that you can inspire others.
But you don't have to go so far as all that — you can always just publish your photos online (Facebook, your personal blog, etc.) and share the link with family and friends so that anyone can re-live the day whenever they feel the need (and have an internet connection). You could even start a group page on Flickr and let other wedding guests contribute their pics.
Any more options that I've missed? Did you do something wildly creative with your pics? A collage? Made life-size photo cut outs? Create a cool video montage? Leave your other ideas in the comments.
About the Author: Megan Finley Horowitz
When Megan's not writing, traveling, and sleeping, she's eating like the fate of the world depends on it. (You're welcome, world!) You can snoop into her personal life over on her website The Dash and Dine!
I think another good idea is to create a slide show with music and keep it on the computer. My mother did this for my graduation (it was running during my grad party and had pics from birth to graduation… sappy but nice) and for my robotics team in high school. My 5th grade class also had one. While I don’t watch those videos too often, when I do see them, it’s a really nice trip back in time.
I did this but put it on DVD. The family loves their copies.
I do a slide show of the photos every year at our anniversary party. Not sure how many people actually stop to look at them, but it makes me happy
I fully intend on doing a Photo Frame Collage probably with photobooth pictures.
Sadly… I’ve done NOTHING with my photos. Even though I love them so very much. One of these days I’ll get around to hanging a few and making an album.
We submitted our ireland wedding to a few blogs (it was featured here on obb and also on polkadot bride) i also made a couple photobooks and gave them to family 🙂
RE: The digital frames. If you don’t like the frame it came in and want to make the frame funkier, most professional framers can remove the digital part and put it in a cooler, funky frame.
Oh I love this post! I have totally been telling all my clients to get those images off their computers. You’d be amazed at how many people never print out their wedding pictures! I totally agree, why pay all that money for professional, high-quality pictures and not print them out for all to enjoy?
I also offer a digital wedding album on an Ipad, instead of a traditional album, for all those techie couples who want to show their wedding pics off in a modern way
I’m planning on creating a scrapbook of sorts, mainly because I’m not a fan of most guest books and this takes care of two problems at once. I’m going to have guests write notes to us on individual cards and then place them in envelopes (and chuck ’em somewhere… haven’t figured that part out yet!). Then, after the wedding, I’m going to make a scrapbook which includes photos, momentos, and the notes from our guests. This way, it’s a keepsake, and it’s interactive so every time we read it, we get to take out and read the notes, unfold and review the paper we wrote our vows on, see the photos, etc.
I also really like the digital picture frame idea. I used to think those were weird*, but now I see that they’re great alternatives to not turning your place into a shrine of one occasion or experience.
Finally, since I’m having an unplugged ceremony, I’m thinking of creating a little online blog to share with guests where I’ll upload some photos. I know not everyone likes/is on Facebook, and this can be made private if need be.
* I have NO IDEA why I thought these were weird. They aren’t. I don’t know what my problem was.
I am encouraging my son & new wife to create an album that has their favorite wedding photo, then add a photo of them every year on their anniversary. of course, one could add notes, thoughts, accomplishments, whatever, but I have this kind of series book for my kids – especially with Christmas photos. it’s amazing to see how people change over time.
I had my vows printed over one of the photos (around the people). We had it printed on canvas and it hangs in our bedroom. Having the vows out where we can see them is a great reminder but still beautiful and artistic for being on the wall.
You could easily do something similar in a small frame on your desk, or just have a bigger version famed instead of on canvas.
I plan on blowing up a few of our engagement pictures on canvas because I found this great discount for a website that does them. If those turn out nicely, I plan to do a few more with the wedding pictures.
I’m… actually not really planning to have photos printed and out. To be honest, the only real reason we’re having a photographer is so the parents can have some photos of the ceremony (we’re going to go unplugged for that) and everyone will take whatever photos they want at the reception anyway.
I’ve never really understood having photos out of the people living in a house – we have mirrors, we know what we look like! I would rather have art on the walls and in frames than photos of myself and the FH, regardless of the event pictured. I know i’ll have the memories forever, and even if they get blurred with time they’ll only be melding into the vast memory of our life together, which i plan to keep adding to forever! (ugh that sounded so sappy. sorry! XD)
When I look in the mirror I don’t see me the way I looked on my wedding day! I rarely have the time to wear makeup and clothing that awesome. I mean, it took me all morning and early afternoon to get ready that day. I put that much effort in about once a decade. Similarly with my sweetie.
well, for us both our outfits are things we’re going to be wearing again and i’m not planning on doing anything out of the ordinary in terms of hair and makeup, so the only thing that’s really going to look different on the day is the particular grouping of people around us!
Photos make a memory of the day, even if you remember it perfectly, your children or friends you make later in life might want to share that moment you had in the past just a little. Perhaps one day a distant relative can see how creative and happy you were on your wedding. Call me biased, but I think photos are worth more than the OP gives them credit for.
Greetings J
Yes but my fiancé and I and his daughter have been together for over 7 years. What was saying is that we have hundreds of pics of us. We do not need the traditional tons of pics of us but we want great pics of our attendees having fun. Some that of our elders having fun as we know they are in age to be around anymore. I am an elder bride of age. My fiancés Mum is at the last leg of Alzheimer’s. I am so looking forward to a pic of my Dad’s family, brothers and sisters all together once again. Same for my fiancé’s family as we are mingling history of Mexican, German and Russian emigration.
I still have a few in a small frames…hiding in the house….and ONE good picture of me, my hubby and sister. (one of the FEW that came out pretty, from a friend) And the rest of the piles of pictures ended up in a 3 ring binder with 4×6 slots! 🙂 Sad to say…nothing super creative, but they are in chronological order from bride party to dinner to wedding day! 🙂 When I renewed my vows 5 years later, I sadly didn’t do anything with those yet. Maybe I should, this year. 🙂
we (spent a fortune to) frame our ketubah, and our enagement agreement/document. photos wise, our two favourite 4×6 prints are framed and sitting on the mantle in the living room. i assembled a digital photo album, which i love. we don’t look at it often, but when we do, it always starts up some fabulous reminiscing with friends and family. I was really diligent about finishing the album within a few months of the wedding, ’cause i knew it wouldn’t get done otherwise. my sister got married 3 years ago, and still hasn’t done anything with her photos. they now have a 7 month old baby. guess whose photos are taking precedence now!
We are both kind of photography junkies (mostly from working in aerial photography) so we went all out. And almost all of the art in our house is photography or iron work so the wedding photos actually blend into it rather well. Our wedding guest book was actually a small coffee table style book of our favorite engagement photos and guests left notes throughout it next to the photos. Parents and grandparents were given framed photos of us for Christmas presents with awesome driftwood frames (our photos were on the beach). Our photographer made two versions of Thank You cards for us with wedding photos, a sincere smiling “proper” thank you card for family and a funky “more us” card for everyone else. Photographer is also making a coffee table book out of our wedding photos, vows, and a few things the Chaplain said during our ceremony. But my favorite thing so far is one of our engagement photos of us with just the ocean in the background that she had printed on brushed aluminum! The ocean looks alive and moving in the background on the metal. I’ll have to post a photo of it on the flickr pool.
I plan on making a scrap book with prints of our photos but also the little notes that were our guest book, and our vows and written out parts of our ceremony. Basically a whole book collage of memories.
I also printed out tons of photos for family members for Christmas, and framed some for my parents.
Also, after seeing those cool canvas prints I have to say I am tempted. So cool!
We have one framed that hangs up in our house. Its a wide with us quite small in the frame because its more of an epic landscape shot. YOu can barely tell its us 🙂
Instead of a guestbook, we got a guestboard, we got a piece of cardboard at an art store and got it signed by everyone at the wedding with their best wishes, then we made a small “frame” around the board with a lot of wedding pictures(we resized the pictures so they would fit 2 or 4 pics on regular 4×6″ photo paper) a bigger 6×8 pic of us at the top, with an individual picture on each side of the big photo, then all the little pics, that way, we managed to show pics of the parents(3 sets of pics since it was one with the parents, then one with his dad and his dad’s wife and then one last pic of his mom and his mom’s BF) the wedding party, our accessories, cake, wedding favors, cutting the cake, toast, a couple of our shots and then pictures where you can see every single person who was at the dinner! at the end we added a couple scrap book stickers and we proudly show it in our tiny appartment. we managed to get everything there for everyone to see!
I still plan to get some more prints and display them once we get our own house, but so far, we love our guestboard!
I am very lazy and haven’t done anything with mine yet and my wedding was over a year ago. Our photographer/friend blew up his favorite and framed it for us, but it was a picture of our plushie Ring Bears all snuggled up. Some day, though, maybe for our 5th anniversary, I would really like to commission our favorite artist to paint the picture of us kissing in the garden. It would be a way to show off/keep around an image from our wedding, but feel artsy and cool (as well as supporting the artist, which is always a good feeling).
We are not going the route of a traditional photographer. Hence my buddy and ex boyfriend who is a roadie and shoots a lot of concert footage. He was more than happy to agree to do the pictures at our venue. Ironically he really likes my fiancé and his daughter. I told him I don’t need a hundred pics of Dave and I every move. I want rock star pics of everyone having fun as we have enough of us together. One or two will do of us:) But will keep a cd or FB for out lil one Maddie. I’m elated to have a close friend and one who does killer work for concert photo footage to agree to do our lil ole wedding party:)