The wedding invitation arrived with what we at first thought was a rather demanding codice: “We ask that you please don’t share your wedding snaps on social media. We look forward to sharing the official wedding photos to your inbox.”
“What’s going on?” my husband and I asked ourselves. “We’re travelling 5 hours to be at the wedding, we’re bringing a gift, we want to share the occasion with our friends and family who won’t be there, and it’s not as though our niece and her fiancée are celebrities or anything… so what’s the problem with Facebooking a few snaps?”
As it turns out, there are quite a few problems with guests sharing wedding snaps on social media – as we learnt later that week when talking to our adult daughter, Lucy. Lucy had recently attended the wedding of her boyfriend’s sister, Hannah, and at Hannah’s wedding, guests were not only asked not to share snaps on social media – they were also asked to leave their mobile phones in their cars!
“I get it,” said Lucy. “I mean, it was Hannah and Jacob’s special day. They’d spent a lot on the dress and suit, their hair, the venue. They wanted the photos to be professional so the occasion reflected what they hoped it would be. They didn’t want random, amateur snaps circulating, especially when it meant everyone in the world could then comment on them.”
Since talking to Lucy, we’ve also heard a host of other reasons why the bride and groom might not want snaps circulating. “People online can be so unkind,” said a friend of ours, whose daughter, Shannon, had made the same ‘no snaps sharing’ request of her guests. “Shannon’s fiance had a jealous ex-girlfriend out there on social media who was just waiting to make a meal of any photos of the ceremony she came across – and the only way to stop her doing that was to keep the pics off the net.” We could see what our friend meant – in the anonymous digital world, it just takes one mean comment to set others off, and a bridal couple’s big day can become a joke within minutes.
We also heard from a celebrant who said her own experience of wedding ceremonies was increasingly being all but ruined because of guests and their mobile phone cameras. Instead of enjoying bringing the audience of guests into the moment, whenever she looked up, all she could see were mobile phones held high, or (and she thought this was even worse) guests studying the snap they’d just taken to see how it looked. “I’m also almost certain there were one or two guests who were texting each other throughout the ceremony,” she told us. “Probably swapping the pics they’d just taken! It was awful!”
The same celebrant had connections with professional wedding photographers who told her of their experiences of phone snappers at weddings. At times, they hadn’t been able to get a clear shot of the happy couple because of guests holding their phones above their heads to get their own shot. They’d also encountered the bizarre experience of taking the big ‘guests, family and bridal party shot’ only to discover, after looking at it closely, some guests’ faces were obscured by their mobile phone because they were taking a photo of the official photographer taking the official photo! “I now encourage the bride and groom to instruct guests to leave their mobiles behind when they come to the wedding,” she said.
When we told Lucy what the celebrant had said, she nodded. “Don’t talk to me about mid-ceremony-snappers!” she said. “Last time I was at a wedding, we couldn’t even see the bride and groom because the guest in front of us was holding their iPad in the air while they videoed everything!” Lucy also wonders if wedding snaps might be on the way out. “I think people my age are be a bit over the digital world dominating our every move. Maybe we’re now beginning to wonder if actually being present in the moment, and having the memory of the moment, even if it fades a little over time, might be more important than capturing every second of it on camera.”
My husband and I appreciate what Lucy said. For our generation (we’re in our mid-sixties) photos were once a costly thing, and wedding photos were therefore precious and protected. It would be a great pity if they became less so, simply because the digital world makes them more accessible.