You are about to send a link. Please upload your photos.
A shared album. An iCloud folder. A Dropbox someone named after you. A card with a QR. That is the usual way to have wedding guests upload photos.
What arrives is not a set. It is hundreds of mixed guest phone photos landing in a chat or a folder the morning after. WhatsApp. iCloud. Every look, half of them blurred. A night you now have to sort.
Those pictures are wedding photos. The pain is the mess.
"Can you all just upload everything you took?" That sentence sounds kind. It turns you into the person who chases, then sorts.
Why upload goes wrong
Upload means later. Later is the taxi. The sofa. A camera roll that also has the supermarket and the dog. Names fall off. Order is whoever remembered first. The couple still opens it at midnight.
A live album fills up while the speeches are still going. Anyone can look. Anyone can add a burst. You asked for the pictures guests took. You got their camera rolls in a pile.
You do not need a better folder. You need the pictures to go somewhere that is not a chat.
A different ask
Do not ask people to upload later. Ask them to shoot now, into one place, on the phone already in a pocket.
Polajoy is that place.
You set the wedding up. Free. One join code. A card on the table, or a line in the invite. Guests open the app, type the code, and join with an account. After the wedding, everyone who attended can be sent the photos. iPhone and Android.
Each person gets a 30-shot roll. Ordinary guests hard-stop at 0. No second roll. No paywall. If you gift a photographer, the friend with the good eye, the sister, they can start another free 30-shot roll. Ordinary guests do not.
After each shot, ten seconds to Accept or Void. Timeout or a screenshot voids it. A void does not spend a frame.
After Accept they still see the photo on the sign screen. A short handwritten note is optional, up to 34 characters. Initials always go on the frame. It seals on Send, then it is gone until unlock.
No retakes. That is the point.
Nobody sees the photos before unlock, including the couple. Not a live album. Not a shared folder. One reveal: end of the night, the next morning, a week later, or a time after the event ends. Then the shop is there if you want paper. Nothing auto-ships.
The couple picks one of 12 film looks for everyone. After the reveal they can download everything free. A small wordmark sits on those downloads. £2.99 takes it off. If they want paper, they order it. Retroprints. A 12×12" layflat photo book. A wall frame with 16 or 25 apertures. Thank-you cards. Prints never have the wordmark.
You do not collect files. You do not chase the people who meant to upload. The film is already on the phone, and it waits.
If the thing you are writing is the ask itself, the polite message that still becomes a chase, there is a note on how to ask wedding guests for photos. If you want the method, albums and AirDrop and a sealed camera compared, there is a note on how to collect wedding photos from guests. If the problem was getting them at all, the morning-after chase, there is a note on how to get photos from wedding guests. If what you wanted was the app itself, there is a note on a wedding guest photo app without the morning-after chat.
Setup is free. Pay only if you want prints afterwards. The complete guide walks through looks, table cards, and the reveal. These notes are written by Richard Lovatt, with Kitty. The rest live with the other articles.
We host a handful of weddings. Cash, or store credit and free products. Apply on the host page. We read every one.