Photo from Heart. Love. Weddings
The social media wedding is all over the wedding blogs and magazines lately. But is the trend overstated? We’ve been conducting a survey of this year’s wedding trends and early returns show that only about 35% of this year’s couples are planning on creating their own hashtag. Is this a mistake?
The main benefit of creating a hashtag for your wedding is that it makes it easier for you to gather all the images your friends and family take. In the old days people put disposable cameras on the table, guests used the cameras and then voila, you had 20 photos of your nephews’ butts and two or three nice moments you otherwise wouldn’t have had seen.
Not having a hashtag means that you will need to rely on friends and family to send you their photos. Although they may promise to do so, that may or may not happen. If you create, and advertise, a hashtag for your wedding your friends are much more likely to post their images instantly on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter. You can use Storify, or another app, and you can sort through the photos at your leisure.
The downside of this is of course is that you actually have to take the time to sort through the photos.This can be especially time consuming if you inadvertently choose the same hashtag as another couple (or something unrelated to your wedding).
You might not get as many photos of your nephews’ butts as you did in the old days, since they don’t have their own phones, but instead, you’ll get a lot of drunken groomsmen shots. You may also get a lot of drunken photos of yourself. Once you establish a hashtag for your wedding you’re essentially encouraging people to use it. That means everyone, from your ex-boyfriend to your non-invited college roommate, to your future boss will see you doing whatever unflattering thing you don’t want them to see you do.
There are alternatives to creating your own hashtag, which still allow you to capture your guests’ views of the day. Photobooths are a great way to create a memorable guest book, a video photo booth allows guests to share their thoughts with you. If you have folks you know will take photos no matter what, go ahead and ask them to do so. By talking with them about it ahead of time you ensure their cooperation in getting you the photos after the wedding. Make sure to remind them to stay out of the way of the professional photographer.
If you live on social media and have come to terms with how to solve problems like hurt feelings and unflattering photos then go ahead, create your hashtag. Make sure to include it on Save the Dates and your wedding website, as well as with your vendors, so that you can get the conversation between you and your guests started early. But if it’s not your think, then it’s not your thing, there’s no real need to have the hashtag.
By the way, if you’re interested in taking that 2014 Wedding Survey we mentioned, you can do so here: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/6GWLNYT . Everyone who completes the survey will be entered for a chance to win a $50 gift certificate to Amazon.com
Photo Credit:
Photo from Heart.Love.Weddings
Photo by: Marvelous Things Photography
