How to choose which wedding photos to share

It is a decision, even when you do not make it

Most couples share the whole set, because sharing the whole set is the path of least resistance — it is what arrives, and it is what the link points at. That is still a choice. It is just one made by default rather than on purpose.

It is worth an hour of your attention, for a reason that has nothing to do with vanity: a photographer's set is not an album. It is every frame they took, several hundred of them, and it includes the ones nobody was ready for. Handing that over whole is closer to sharing the contact sheet than sharing the photographs.

Three passes, once each

Going through six hundred photos deciding “yes or no” on each one is exhausting and you will lose your judgement somewhere around number two hundred. Three quick passes work better than one careful one.

First pass: the ones you love. Go through quickly and mark only the photos that make you feel something. Do not think about balance or coverage or whether everyone's in them. You are looking for twenty or thirty, not two hundred. These go first, because they are what people see before they decide whether to keep scrolling.

Second pass: the ones you would rather not explain. Now go through looking only for those, and take them out. You will know them when you see them and it goes faster than the first pass.

Third pass: everything else stays. There is no third decision to make. Whatever survived the second pass is fine, and agonising over the merely average ones is how an afternoon becomes a fortnight.

What “rather not explain” usually means

Not scandal, mostly. It is smaller and more human than that:

• The ones where somebody is mid-blink, mid-sentence, or mid-mouthful.
• The end of the night, when everyone had been at the bar for six hours and it shows.
• A guest who would be quietly mortified — and who will never tell you, which is exactly why it is your job to notice.
• Anyone in a photograph who is no longer in the picture, so to speak. Weddings are large and families are complicated.
• Other people's children, if their parents are careful about that. Some are, very.

The test is not “is this a bad photo”. It is “would I be comfortable if the person in it opened this on their phone at work”.

Leaving one out is not deleting it

This is the bit that stops people choosing at all, so it is worth being clear about. Taking a photo out of what your guests see does not destroy it. You keep the full set — every frame your photographer delivered — in your own storage, at full resolution, for ever.

What you are deciding is only what is on the link you send round. Two different things, and conflating them is what makes people share everything out of a vague fear of losing something.

Which assumes you have your own copy of the full set in the first place. If you have not downloaded it yet, do that first — most photographer galleries expire, and the choosing is much easier when nothing is at stake.

You are allowed to change your mind

Somebody will ask. A guest will spot themselves in a photo they hate, or a relationship will change, or you will simply look again in a year and think differently about one of them.

So it is worth checking, before you commit to somewhere to share from, that you can take a single photo down afterwards without taking the whole gallery down with it. Some ways of sharing let you; a folder you granted access to, or a post twelve people have already saved, largely do not.

A short version

• Mark the twenty or thirty you love. Put them first.
• Take out anything you would rather not explain.
• Leave the rest alone.
• Keep the full set yourself, whatever you share.
• Make sure you can take one down later.