Technology Create the ultimate wedding album using Google Photos

A wedding is that beautiful ceremony where two people are united in marriage. Today, in Nigeria, a wedding ceremony is really a big deal and proper planning and a whole lot of preparations go into making sure that the day turns out as beautiful and memorable as it was envisioned by the bride and groom.

Weddings are really dependent on budgets. The bride and groom either hires a professional wedding planner or they get help from friends and family to put together the wedding ceremony. A checklist is done; the wedding venue, guest list, the cake, caterer, don’t forget the “aso ebi” frenzy and so on are all planned for. Still, an essential item for any wedding ceremony has to be photography.

Now, imagine having every detail in place for the wedding ceremony only to forget to hire a photographer to capture all the beautiful moments? Imagine having a wedding ceremony without capturing the beautiful moments on photos? That wouldn’t be a nice picture. It could turn a wedding ceremony to a post-event disaster.

Pre-wedding photos are also trendy these days. Even for bachelor and bachelorette parties, photos are essential for documenting the beautiful transition to and even after the wedding ceremony.

Nowadays, wedding photos have moved from the usual hard copy printouts to having photo albums that are beautifully designed by contracted photographers for weddings. Some have even gone a step further to have their photos posted online on various wedding blogs and websites. This is also a trend nowadays.

Thanks to smartphones almost everyone can be a photographer these days and Google is even making it easier with Google Photos. For your wedding, you can download the Google Photos app from the iTunes Store if you are an iPhone user; or from the Play Store if you use Android. Once you have done that, getting hold of everyone’s photo after the wedding can be tricky, however, here are a few tips to make Google Photos the right photo app to make the process painless.

Choose a hashtag for the big day

Make the hashtag simple, yet unique enough to remember, for example, #BayowedsKemi2016. Ensure that you have a singular hashtag that is adopted by all for the wedding ceremony events, that’s the pre, during and post events. Communicate the hashtag on invitations and on your social media platforms. Get everyone to use the hashtag when they post photos from your wedding to various social media platforms.

Create a shared album in Google Photos

The Google photos app will automatically create an album for all your photos taken on your wedding day. All you have to do is select the album, give it a name and hit, ‘share’ to see the sharing options. Share the album with all your guests and ask them to upload their photos from your wedding to the album.

Track the Photos

Track the photos from less obliging guests by searching the hashtag on the social media platforms your guests have used.

Edit photos on Google Photos

Google Photos also allows you to edit the photos in the app. You can make your wedding photos prettier, in black and white shades or by using other photo effect tools available on the app. Once you are done editing, remove the bloopers or duplicates you do not want. Feel free to go ahead to print your edited wedding photos. Simply download them from Google Photos to a flash drive and take it off to the nearest photo print shop.

Here are some cool stuffs that Google Photos can also do for you:

• Google Photos is a free photos management system that offers unlimited storage for high resolution images and videos. You can upload literally as much content as you want for free!
• Google photos Is available as an iOS, Android and desktop app allowing you to auto-sync images and videos from your mobile devices, PC, camera or SD cards. You can also upload photos through a “drag-and-drop” interface.
• Google Photos will merge two or more duplicates of photos leaving only just the one photo, there by cleaning your storage space automatically.
• Smarter search is incorporated in Google Photos. You can search through your photos with a keyword much like what you do when searching for images in Google Search. For example, when searching your wedding photos with the keyword, ‘food’, will return every image of food in it. You can also search with a colour keyword like ‘red’, green or blue.
• A new feature of Google Photos is that it allows you to snap few photos in succession and create an animated GIF. This function can be fun for your wedding photos.

So, go ahead, download Google Photos and start using the magical features of the photo app as you plan your wedding in style and class. Google Photos is also a fun and fantastic app for capturing exciting moments at every event.