Wedding photo etiquette for guests: what to post and when

Most guests want to do the right thing and have no idea what the right thing is, because nobody has ever written it down. The rules are not complicated and they are not about photography. They are about not standing between people and the thing they came to see.

This is written for a guest. If you are the couple, the useful version of it is that almost everything below can be settled by one sentence from you in advance, and guests will follow whatever you say.

Wedding photo etiquette during the ceremony

The ceremony is the only part of the day where getting this wrong is expensive, because it happens once and cannot be repeated. The paid photographer has one chance at the walk down the aisle, the vows and the first kiss, and they are working from fixed positions chosen weeks earlier.

So stay in your seat. Do not step into the aisle, do not lean out into it, and do not hold a phone or an iPad out over it. A raised arm at the end of a row is the single most common way a guest ends up in the middle of a photograph the couple paid for and will hang on a wall.

If the couple asked for an unplugged ceremony, that is not a suggestion and it is not aimed at you personally. It usually means they want to see faces rather than screens in the photographs of the moment they got married. Put the phone away entirely rather than taking one quick one, because one quick one is what everybody thinks.

If they did not ask, shoot from where you are sitting, without flash, with the shutter sound off. Flash in a dim ceremony ruins the professional exposure and yours as well. Then put it down for the vows and actually watch them. You will have the photographs from somebody else and you will not have watched it twice.

What not to post, and when

The reception is fair game for photographs. Posting them publicly is a separate question and the answer is usually not yet.

The convention that has settled is that the couple posts first. They have not seen a single frame from their own wedding at that point, and the first image of the dress or the first kiss appearing on somebody else's feed takes that from them for nothing. Waiting a day or two costs you nothing at all.

• Nothing of the dress before the ceremony. If you saw it getting ready, that is a privilege and not content.
• Nothing unflattering of anybody, ever, and be honest about what counts. The rule of thumb is that if the person is mid-sentence, mid-chew or mid-fall, it goes to them privately and nowhere else.
• No location or venue details in a public post while the wedding is still happening. An empty house and a public address are an obvious pairing to the wrong reader.
• Nothing involving other people's arguments, tears or drunkenness. This is the one that ends friendships and it is entirely avoidable.

Sending the same photographs straight to the couple is not the same act and has none of these problems. Private is instant, public can wait. If the couple asked everybody to use a tag, that is a different arrangement and worth understanding, because a hashtag and a gallery collect from different people.

Photographs of other people's children

Children at a wedding produce the best photographs of the night and the most sensitive ones. The safe rule is to take them, send them to the parents, and post none of them.

Plenty of parents are careful about where their children appear online and will not say anything to you at a wedding about it. Sending the photograph directly is unambiguously welcome and takes ten seconds. Posting it puts somebody in the position of having to ask you to take it down, which nobody wants to do at all.

The same applies to anybody who is visibly avoiding the camera. There is usually one person at every wedding who does not want to be photographed, and they will not announce it. If somebody turns away twice, that is the announcement.

The photographs nobody else is taking

The professional is covering the ceremony, the portraits, the speeches and the first dance from the best angle in the room. You are not going to beat them at that and there is no reason to try.

What they cannot get is everything happening at your table while they are somewhere else. The grandmother laughing at something nobody else heard. The car on the way. The four people who ended up in the kitchen at two in the morning. The couple has never seen any of it, and it is the part of their own wedding they have the least of.

So point the phone away from the middle of the room. The best thing a guest contributes is proximity, not quality, and a slightly blurred photograph from inside the group beats a sharp one from the back of it every time.

One rule that covers the rest

Take everything. Send everything to the couple. Post almost nothing, and post it late. If you are hesitating over a particular photograph, the hesitation is the answer, so send that one privately and leave it there.

That is the whole of it, and it works because the two halves have opposite risks. Sending too much privately costs the couple nothing and occasionally gives them the photograph of the night. Posting too much publicly cannot be undone by anybody. If there is a card on the table with a code on it, that is the private half already solved, and it takes no app and no account.

If you are the couple reading this rather than a guest, say the version of it you want out loud on the night. Guests do what they are asked and the asking is one sentence.