What Actually Happens to Your Wedding Photos After the Wedding?

You’ve had your wedding, I’ve packed up my cameras and headed home. Job done, right?

Not quite 😂

I think it’s quite easy to assume that most of a wedding photographer’s work happens on the actual wedding day. After all, that’s the bit you see. But photographing the wedding is really only one part of it, and there’s a lot that goes on behind the scenes before your finished gallery lands in your inbox.

It actually starts before I even arrive at your wedding. I’ll have already spent time going through your plans and timings, checking all the details we’ve discussed and getting everything ready. Cameras, lenses, batteries, memory cards — all the boring-but-important stuff that means I can turn up ready to concentrate on you and your day.

Then comes the wedding itself.

While I’m there, I’m obviously photographing all the big moments, but I’m also constantly looking for everything happening around them. The reactions, the laughter, the hugs, the slightly chaotic bits and those little moments you probably didn't even notice at the time.

And I take a LOT of photos.

I’ve taken around 800 photographs at a two-hour wedding before, so when I'm photographing a full wedding day, you can imagine how much there can be to go through afterwards!

Once I get home, the first thing I need to do is make sure everything is safely backed up. Taking any chances with someone’s wedding photos? Absolutely not 😂

And then the time-consuming bit really begins.

What happens when I start working on your wedding photos?

Before I can even start properly editing, I need to go through every single photograph I've taken.

There will be several photos of the same moment, people blinking, test shots and the occasional person who has somehow managed to walk directly in front of my camera at exactly the wrong time.

I go through all of them and work out which photographs are going to make up your finished gallery. I'm not just looking for the technically best ones either. Sometimes it's a look, a laugh or someone's reaction in the background that makes a photograph worth keeping.

Then I start editing.

Every photograph you receive has been individually worked on by me. I'll look at the lighting, colour, crop and all the little things that need adjusting. Some photographs don't need much at all, while others need a bit more attention.

Sadly, Photoshop still hasn't given me a big "edit this entire wedding perfectly" button.

I'm waiting 😂

Once I think I've finished, I go through everything again. There are always little things I notice on that final look, and I want the whole gallery to feel right before it leaves me.

Then there’s exporting everything, uploading the photographs and getting your gallery ready before I can finally send that very exciting:

Your wedding photos are ready! 🤍

Why does a wedding gallery take time?

This is probably the bit people don't see.

If I'm at your wedding for eight hours, there are many more hours of work happening away from the wedding itself.

I also run my photography business alongside my full-time job, so I’d rather be realistic about how long your gallery will take than promise something ridiculously quick and then rush through it.

Because I know you're going to be dying to see something from the day, I send sneak peeks within 48 hours. It means you've got some photographs to look at and share while I'm working away on the rest.

And that's really the point of all this.

When you book a wedding photographer, you're not just paying for the hours you see us standing there with a camera.

You're paying for everything that happens when nobody is watching too.

The planning beforehand. The hundreds or thousands of photographs to go through. The editing. The checking. And me staring at the same photograph for far too long because I'm deciding whether I prefer one tiny adjustment over another 😂

Your wedding photographs are something you're hopefully going to have for the rest of your lives. I don't want to rush them just so I can say I've finished them quickly.

So while you're waiting for that “your photos are ready” email, I promise there's quite a lot going on behind the scenes. 🤍