Guide

How to collect photos from your wedding guests

Everyone at your wedding will take photos. Almost none of them will reach you unless you make it effortless. Here is every method people use, what each one actually delivers, and the one we built AllShots around.

By the AllShots team · Updated 21 September 2026

1. The group chat

What you get: a few dozen photos from the people who remember, compressed, in a thread you will never scroll back through. What you lose: originals, order, and everyone who was not in the group. Fine for a dinner. Not for a wedding.

2. A shared drive folder

What you get: the original files from the three guests who follow instructions. What you lose: everyone else. Uploading to a folder from a phone, days later, is a chore, and most people never get to it.

3. The Instagram hashtag

What you get: the public posts. What you lose: the photos of guests with private accounts, the ones that never got posted, and every original file — Instagram gives you a compressed square, not the photo. More in the hashtag alternative.

4. Disposable cameras on the tables

What you get: unposed, one-take photos with real charm. What you lose: a few weeks and a developing bill, plus the cameras that were never used, never found, or pointed at the ceiling. The idea is right; the logistics are from 1998. See the disposable camera app for the same idea without the film.

5. A QR-code album (what AllShots does)

What you get: every photo from every guest who scans, at high quality, in one live album, from the moment it is taken, with a single ZIP download at the end. What guests do: scan a code and point their phone. No app, no account, nothing to remember afterwards.

How AllShots works, in one minute

1. Create the event on host.allshots.app or in the iPhone app. Name, date, how many shots each guest gets — done in about sixty seconds, no account needed to start.
2. Share the QR code (or the 6-character join code). Print it on a sign, put it on the tables, drop the link in the group chat.
3. Guests scan and shoot. The camera opens in their browser — nothing to install, no account. iPhone users can also use the app.
4. Everything lands in one live gallery you control: hide or delete anything, and download the whole album as a ZIP.

Getting the scan rate up

• Put the code on every table, not only at the entrance. People scan when they sit down.
• Say what happens. “Scan to add your photos to our album — no app needed” outperforms a bare QR every time.
• Have someone scan first. The bridesmaids, the best man — once the album has photos in it, everyone else follows.
• Send the link before the day. Guests who scan early add their getting-ready and travel photos.
• Give a constraint. In disposable mode, “you get 24 shots” makes people take the photo instead of thinking about it.

Afterwards

Download the ZIP. Share the album link back to the guests — they get everyone’s photos of them, which is the thing they actually wanted. Hide anything you would rather not keep. On a paid plan the album stays for the life of the event; on the free plan, download within seven days.

One payment per event, no subscription. Same prices in the app and on the web — see pricing.

Questions people ask