How to Back Up Your Wedding Photos So You Never Lose Them
We're about to say something deeply unsexy.
Back up your wedding photos.
We know.
You just got married. You have hundreds of beautiful photographs. And now your photographers are talking to you about file storage.
Romance is alive and well.
But your wedding photographs are one of the few things from your day that you genuinely can't replace.
So when your gallery arrives, downloading and backing it up should be one of the very first things you do.
Step One: Download the Whole Gallery
Not screenshots.
Not just your 37 favourites.
Not the tiny versions you saved from Instagram.
Download everything.
From your Cedar & Cove gallery, you'll have access to files intended for different uses.
Your high-resolution files are the ones you'll want for printing and archiving.
Your web-size files are perfect for sharing online.
Download both.
Step Two: Save a Copy to Your Computer
Create a folder that is painfully obvious.
Something like:
WEDDING PHOTOS — DO NOT DELETE
Subtlety isn't necessary here.
Inside, you can create folders for your high-resolution and web-size photographs so you'll always know which version to use.
Step Three: Make Another Copy Somewhere Else
This is the important part.
One copy isn't really a backup.
If your wedding photographs exist only on your laptop and your laptop dies, disappears or has an unfortunate encounter with a glass of wine, you have a problem.
Keep another copy somewhere separate.
That might be:
An external hard drive.
Cloud storage.
Another computer.
Or ideally, a combination.
The 3-2-1 Rule
If you want to get extra responsible about it, there's a common backup strategy called the 3-2-1 rule.
Keep:
3 copies of your files
on at least
2 different types of storage
with
1 copy stored somewhere else.
For example:
Your computer.
An external hard drive.
Cloud storage.
Now you're officially the kind of person who has their life together.
At least when it comes to wedding photographs.
Don't Rely on Your Online Gallery Forever
Your online gallery is a beautiful way to view and share your photographs, but it shouldn't be your permanent backup plan.
Download your files while you have access to them and keep your own copies.
Future-you does not want to be digging through emails years from now trying to remember where your wedding photographs went.
And Please Don't Use Facebook as a Backup
We shouldn't have to say this.
But we're going to.
Instagram and Facebook are not photo storage.
Social platforms compress photographs, accounts can disappear and screenshots aren't the same quality as your original files.
Post them everywhere.
Just keep the originals somewhere safe.
One More Backup We Love: Print them.
Seriously.
Digital storage changes.
Technology changes.
Hard drives fail.
Cloud services come and go.
A professionally printed photograph or wedding album gives your images a physical home too.
Plus, it's significantly nicer to stumble across your wedding album in 20 years than an external hard drive labelled SEAGATE_BACKUP_04.
→ READ NEXT: Wedding Albums: Are They Actually Worth It?
And if you've just received your wedding gallery and you're wondering what else you should do with it:
→ READ: Your Gallery Is Here — Now What?
Now go back it up.
We'll wait.
Brandie + Rhonda
Cedar & Cove Photography
