Your Gallery Is Here — Now What?
The email has arrived.
Your wedding gallery is officially HERE.
You’ve opened it immediately, obviously. You’ve cried. You’ve laughed. You’ve zoomed in on your friends in the background. You’ve discovered approximately 47 photos you had no idea we were taking.
And now you have hundreds of beautiful photographs sitting in an online gallery and one very reasonable question:
What the heck am I supposed to do with all of these?
We’ve got you.
Here’s what we recommend doing once your Cedar & Cove wedding gallery lands in your inbox.
Step One: Make a Night of It
Before you start downloading, posting and changing every profile picture you’ve had since 2019, actually sit down and look through your wedding together.
Pour a glass of wine. Order something good. Put your phones on Do Not Disturb.
Then hit slideshow and relive the whole thing.
Because your wedding gallery isn't just a collection of pretty photos. It's the story of the day, including a whole lot of moments you probably didn't even know happened.
Your partner trying not to cry.
Your mom absolutely crying.
Your best friend losing it on the dance floor.
Your flower girl stealing snacks during cocktail hour.
The tiny moments are usually some of our favourites.
Step Two: Download EVERYTHING
Not just your favourites.
Not just the ones you want to post.
All of them.
Download the full-resolution version (for printing) and the web-size version (for the socials) of your gallery and save them somewhere safe.
And then save them somewhere else too.
We recommend keeping at least two copies, for example, one on your computer or external hard drive and another in cloud storage.
Technology is wonderful.
Technology also occasionally decides to ruin your life.
Back up your wedding photos. Please.
Step Three: Pick Your Favourites
Now comes the impossible part.
Choosing favourites.
Use the heart/favourite feature in your gallery to start creating a collection of the images that feel the most you.
Don't only choose the perfectly posed portraits, either.
Pick the photo where you're laughing so hard your face looks ridiculous.
Pick Grandma hugging you.
Pick your dad's reaction.
Pick the blurry dance-floor photo that somehow perfectly captures what 11:47 p.m. felt like.
Those are often the photographs that become more valuable with time.
Step Four: PRINT. YOUR. PHOTOS.
We're photographers, so naturally we're going to be slightly dramatic about this one.
But seriously.
Print your wedding photos.
Don't let one of the biggest days of your life spend the next 40 years living between screenshots and memes in your camera roll.
Choose a few favourites for your walls.
Put one beside your bed.
Give framed prints to your parents.
And make the album.
You will never regret having a physical wedding album sitting on your coffee table that your kids, and someday maybe your grandkids, can flip through.
→ READ NEXT: How to Choose Which Wedding Photos to Print
→ READ NEXT: Wedding Albums: Are They Actually Worth It?
Step Five: Share Away
Yes, you can absolutely post your photos.
In fact, we LOVE seeing which images our couples choose.
Instagram carousel? Do it.
New profile photo? Obviously.
Anniversary post every year from here on out? We've got you covered.
If you're sharing your photos on social media, we'd love if you tagged @cedarandcovephotography so we can see them too.
Just make sure you're using the web-size downloads rather than screenshots. Your wedding photos deserve better than Screenshot → Crop → Instagram → Pixel Soup.
→ READ NEXT: How to Share Your Wedding Photos Without Destroying the Quality
Step Six: Send Photos to the People You Love
Your wedding photos aren't just meaningful to you.
There are probably photos in your gallery that your parents, grandparents, wedding party and friends would absolutely love to have.
Send Grandma the photo.
Trust us.
And if Christmas is coming?
Congratulations. You've just solved several gifts.
Step Seven: Give Your Wedding Team a Little Love
There were a whole lot of people behind the scenes making your wedding look and feel the way it did, and your finished gallery is a pretty great way to show them some love.
Tag your venue, planner, florist, hair and makeup team, cake designer and other vendors when you're sharing photos. They'll LOVE seeing professional images of the beautiful work they created.
And if someone made your wedding experience particularly wonderful, consider leaving them a review.
Reviews are a huge deal to small wedding businesses. They help future couples figure out who they can trust, and they genuinely make someone's entire day when the notification pops up.
And yes, we're going to shamelessly include ourselves here.
If you loved having Cedar & Cove photograph your wedding, we'd be incredibly grateful if you left us a Google review.
Tell people what it was actually like having us there. Were you nervous about photos? Did we make you comfortable? Did Brandie fix something she absolutely wasn't hired to fix? Did Rhonda convince your uncle to cooperate with family photos?
We want to hear it.
→ READ NEXT: Your Wedding Vendor Thank-You Checklist
And Then… Just Enjoy Them
This might be the most important part.
You don't have to turn every photograph into something.
Some can simply exist.
Every once in a while, open your gallery again.
Look at the people who were there.
Look at yourselves.
Remember what it felt like.
Because eventually the flowers disappear, the cake gets eaten, the dress gets packed away and someone finally throws out the wedding favours that have been sitting in a drawer for seven years.
But the photographs stay.
And we're pretty freaking honoured that we got to make them for you.
Brandie + Rhonda
Cedar & Cove Photography
West Coast wedding photography for couples who want beautiful photographs without spending their wedding day posing for them.
