20 Things to Do With Your Wedding Photos After the Wedding

Your wedding gallery has arrived.

You have hundreds of beautiful photographs documenting one of the biggest days of your life.

And approximately four of them are currently doing all the heavy lifting:

Instagram post.

Profile picture.

Phone wallpaper.

Lock screen.

Meanwhile, the other few hundred are sitting patiently in your gallery wondering when it's their turn.

So let's give them something to do.

Here are 20 ways to actually use your wedding photos after the wedding.

1. Print One Really Big

And by big, we don't mean 8x10.

Choose a photograph you absolutely love and make it a statement piece in your home.

Wedding photos don't have to be tiny.

2. Create a Wedding Album

This is the obvious one.

But also one of the best.

An album lets you tell the entire story instead of choosing one or two photographs to represent the whole day.

→ READ: Wedding Albums — Are They Actually Worth It?

3. Make Parent Albums

Your parents probably have a completely different set of favourite photographs than you do.

Create smaller albums for them.

Instant Christmas/birthday/anniversary gift.

You're welcome.

4. Frame Photos for Your Parents

Even easier.

Choose one beautiful photograph with each side of the family and frame it.

5. Send Grandma the Photo

You know which one.

The one of her looking amazing.

Print it.

Don't just text it.

6. Create a Gallery Wall

Mix wedding portraits with candids, black-and-white photographs, family images and details.

Your wedding gallery wall doesn't need to scream:

HELLO. WE GOT MARRIED.

It can simply become part of your home.

7. Make Thank-You Cards

Use one of your favourite wedding photographs for your thank-you cards.

Bonus points if it's a funny one.

8. Make Christmas Cards

Just married?

Congratulations.

You don't need to organize another family photo shoot before Christmas.

Your wedding gallery has you covered.

9. Change Your Phone Wallpaper

Tiny joy every time you check your phone.

Which, statistically speaking, is probably 700 times per day.

10. Create an Anniversary Tradition

Every anniversary, choose one photograph from your wedding that you've never posted before.

Tell the story behind it.

Suddenly you've got anniversary content for approximately the rest of your natural lives.

11. Print a Photo From Your First Look

Put it somewhere private like your bedroom.

Not every wedding photograph needs an audience.

12. Frame Your Vows With a Photograph

If you wrote your own vows, pair them with a favourite portrait.

It's personal without being overly wedding-y.

13. Make a Little Wedding Shelf

Album.

Small framed photograph.

Invitation.

Maybe your vows.

A few meaningful pieces from the day.

No giant shadow box containing twelve dried roses required.

Unless that's your thing.

Then absolutely proceed.

14. Give Prints to Your Wedding Party

Especially the candid ones.

Your friends will appreciate having a genuinely beautiful photograph of themselves dressed up and looking suspiciously responsible.

15. Use Them in Your Home Office

Put one somewhere you'll see it on a terrible Tuesday.

Marriage: cute.

Emails: less cute.

16. Make a Calendar

Twelve months.

Twelve favourite photographs.

Grandparents particularly eat this one up.

17. Turn One Into Art

A beautiful landscape-style wedding photograph can work almost like artwork.

Think mountains, ocean, architecture, forest or an environmental portrait where the two of you aren't necessarily filling the entire frame.

18. Print the Funny Ones

Please.

Not everything in your home needs to be elegant.

If there is a photograph from your reception that makes you laugh every single time you see it, that photograph deserves a frame.

19. Save Some for Later

You don't need to use everything immediately.

In five years, you may discover that the photograph you barely noticed when your gallery arrived has become one of your favourites.

20. Actually Look at Them

This sounds ridiculously simple.

But it's probably the most important one.

Open the album.

Scroll through the gallery.

Look at the people.

Remember the conversations.

Notice things you missed the first time.

Your wedding photographs aren't just something you receive at the end of the wedding process.

They're the part you get to keep.

→ READ: How to Choose Which Wedding Photos to Print

→ READ: Your Gallery Is Here — Now What?

Brandie + Rhonda

Cedar & Cove Photography