If you’ve heard it once, you’ve heard it a thousand times: your wedding day goes by so quickly. Don’t add to your stress by worrying about capturing each moment when there are endless ways to document your fabulous life event, with flair!
A current trend for some brides and grooms is to have an unplugged wedding, where cameras, personal cell phones, and social media are limited or restricted entirely. When guests try to take their own videos or photos and get in the way of your professional photographer, the stress can take away from your day. While too much technology can be a hindrance, it can also help capture your day. Here are some clever ways to utilize technology in unobtrusive and brilliant ways in order to entertain your guests, capture memories and share every moment.
Wedding Website
In this age of technology, a wedding website is no longer an option, it’s a necessity! These sites can offer guests location information, a look at your wedding party, and registry lists. Many couples start their homepage with the story of how they met and how they got engaged. Help friends and family get to know you and your future spouse with personal touches. Add the details about your ceremony and reception with times and addresses in bold. Save yourself from answering the same questions from your old Aunt Linda by having a Frequently Asked Questions page (Can guests wear white? No. Is there going to be alcohol? Yes.). The last thing a bride needs to be dealing with on her wedding day are text messages from guests asking random questions! Avoid the noise by adding a contact email option to your website so you can deal with queries well beforehand, on your time.
Photo Booths
With hilarious props, signs, hats, and glasses, your guests can laugh, pose, and make memories in a fun photo booth. These have become all the rage at events, and the printed out photos are keepsakes for attendees. You can even get a personalized border for the photos with your wedding information and date! This also gives guests something additional to do during cocktail hour or your husband’s first dance with your mother-in-law.
Wedding Hashtags
Afraid of having to scour your friends’ social media accounts to find photos of your special day? Fear not! Decide on a hashtag to share with everyone who attends. It can be as straightforward as your names and the word wedding, or as silly as a play off of your new last name. Share your hashtag on your wedding website, on your social media, at your ceremony on the back of the program, and at the reception on chic signs or on the dinner menu. Don’t be afraid to promote it! Encourage guests to use your hashtag for their personal photos and photos of you and your venue, making it a simple and quick way to find them later.
Drones
Consider a professional photographer who uses a drone to capture sky-high photographs of you and your wedding party. These pictures turn out to be panoramic glory and are quickly becoming wedding must-haves. Drones capture images a photographer alone couldn’t dream of catching and are especially helpful if you are in a unique or particularly picturesque location. Capture the beauty of you, your bridesmaids and groomsmen, your ceremony, and your scenery with this tech-savvy option.
Videos
If you think you may, even in fifty years, want to watch your wedding ceremony, just book that videographer! Shaky iPhone videos from a friend in the twelfth row back simply won’t do. Splurge on a well reviewed and recommended videographer who can set up unobtrusive cameras and microphones to catch each word and each happy smile.
Pro tip: See if your videographer has a drone!
Selfie Sticks
Don’t groan! Selfie sticks are a fad that are still in fashion. Guests can take flattering pictures of themselves from their best angle, include lots of people, and get a great background image. Have a few on hand and see how popular they are!
Live Stream
Did one of your guests have to miss your wedding due to old age, illness, or distance? Help them feel like they were really there with Facebook Live, Instagram Live or another live video streaming application. They can watch the entire wedding from start to finish, and feel as included as the people rocking on the dance floor. This awesome option is a thoughtful touch for those who really wanted to be there but just couldn’t make it work.
GoPros, Everywhere!
That’s right, you can put these cameras everywhere instead of using a photographer, and even hand them out to guests to document your wedding! Allow them to take a GoPro for the evening and return it later that night. Extra wild ideas? Attach one to Skippy, your canine ringbearer, to capture his antics at the ceremony, and settle one in your bouquet to document the walk down the aisle from your perspective.
Utilize any and all of these options to make your big day not only memorable, but accessible. Having gorgeous poised photos, hysterical candids, amazing videos, and more keeps your wedding day at your fingertips long after it’s over. Keep that radiance and glow by reliving the biggest day of your life over and over again, all because you made the most of your favorite day with a plugged in, technology-loving wedding!
