How do I ask guests for their photos without nagging?

Give them one immediate gesture: a QR code on the tables on the day, then a single message afterwards with the album link. A link you can upload to in ten seconds gets more answers than ten individual reminders.

Which method keeps the photo quality?

A shared folder, WeTransfer and a shared album behind a QR code all keep the original files. Messaging apps and Instagram compress. The difference shows up in print and on a big screen, so pick a method without compression for the memories that matter.

Guide

How do you get the photos your wedding guests took?

Q: Can I collect the videos too?

Yes, provided the tool takes them without degrading them: messaging apps compress video hard, and some services cap its length. The free trial accepts 20 photos or videos until 30 days after the event (one year at most), with every feature included; the Event plan, at 39 € once (launch price until December 31, 2026; 49 € for new purchases from January 1, 2027), includes 100 GB of storage per album with no limit on the number of photos and videos and keeps it for 2 years.

Q: How long after the wedding can we still collect?

For as long as your album lasts. The album is kept for 2 years on the Event plan; an album still on trial is deleted 30 days after the event date (or after its creation, if the album has no event date or one earlier than its creation), and no later than one year after its creation. Guests upload at their own pace, weeks later if that is when they get round to it, and nothing is deleted without notice. Watch out for services that close the album, or start charging for it, a month or two after the event.

By Max Bryselbout · Text updated on 13 October 2026

After a wedding, many photos are still on guests’ phones. A group chat, shared folder, transfer or QR album: here are six ways to collect them, and the steps each one asks of your guests.

The rule that settles everything else

Every couple who has been through it says the same thing: the fewer steps there are, the more photos you get. Each piece of friction (installing an app, creating an account, remembering a web address) removes a slice of your guests. Keep that yardstick in mind through the six methods below.

The friction has a number attached to it. Reckon on three to five photos from each guest who plays along, so a few hundred for a wedding of a hundred people. What separates a thin album from a full one is therefore not how many photos were taken, but how many guests actually upload. The arithmetic is laid out in how many photos a wedding guest takes.

1. The group chat

Everyone's first instinct. WhatsApp, iMessage, Messenger: your guests are already there, a group takes a minute to create, and the photos start arriving on their own. That is its strength, and very nearly all of it.

A messaging app is built to send a picture quickly, so it compresses photos and videos hard. Memories drown between two messages about parking, and getting a hundred photos back means saving them one at a time. Guests outside the group (colleagues, distant family, the friend on a different platform) never take part at all. Our full read is on WhatsApp for event photos.

2. The shared folder (Google Drive, Dropbox, iCloud)

The serious workaround. An open folder, the link sent to your guests, sometimes a QR code made with a free generator: it works, and the quality survives intact.

The limits show up in use. Depending on the settings, guests need an account to upload (that is also the ceiling of a shared Google Photos album), and nothing about a file manager makes anyone want to join in: empty folders, duplicates, files called IMG_4521, and no album to leaf through.

3. WeTransfer

The one-off send. Excellent when your photographer delivers their files to you. For collecting from fifty guests it is the need turned inside out: every guest has to create their own transfer to your address, and free links expire within days, so open one too late and it is gone. The detail is in our comparison of WeTransfer for an event.

4. The Instagram hashtag

The pretty public wall. A hashtag in your names, and the photos appear on the feed. Good fun during the party, but everything is public, compressed and limited to those who post, which is to say a minority of the room. The photos stay at Instagram, not with you, and nobody in their forties is going to open an account for the occasion.

5. The USB stick on the night

The method from before. A laptop at the back of the room, everyone comes and plugs their phone in. In theory. In practice nobody leaves the dance floor to queue at a computer, and the photos taken after midnight, which are often the best ones, never make it onto the stick.

6. The shared album behind a QR code

The method built for the job, and the shortest one by the rule above. You create the album before the wedding and put its QR code on the tables. Guests point their phone camera at it, the album opens in the browser, and each of them uploads photos and videos in a few seconds, with no app and no account. The original quality is kept, everything lands in the same place, and anyone can download the whole album.

That is what Medley does for your wedding, and the mechanics are set out in our guide to the photo QR code. The same link also carries a guest book, where a guest leaves a written note, records their voice or films themselves for a minute: the one thing none of the other five methods brings home. In fairness, it does not fill itself. Without a word from the DJ or a line on the sign it stays as empty as the notebook by the door. It is all described on our wedding guest book page.

On price, to place it: The free trial accepts 20 photos or videos until 30 days after the event (one year at most), with every feature included; the Event plan, at 39 € once (launch price until December 31, 2026; 49 € for new purchases from January 1, 2027), includes 100 GB of storage per album with no limit on the number of photos and videos and keeps it for 2 years. The album is kept for 2 years on the Event plan; an album still on trial is deleted 30 days after the event date (or after its creation, if the album has no event date or one earlier than its creation), and no later than one year after its creation. The detail is on the pricing page.

And if the wedding has already happened?

The album works just as well afterwards. Create it, send the link round your groups and by message (“put your photos in here, we want all of them”): it is enormously more effective than chasing each guest for a transfer. One message, one link, and the photos arrive over the following days in the quality they were shot in. The full catch-up, sample message included, is in sharing the photos after the wedding.