Hello ESB!
How does one know what's an appropriate number of wedding pictures to post on facebook? Things to consider:
1. I don't want to be obnoxious. So that means I'll probably have to keep the number of portraits down.
2. We don't have a functioning wedding website we could send.
3. I don't want to email our proofing site from the photog to all 150 people there to look at over a thousand pictures, most of which are of just us, or worse yet, just me.
4. I do REALLY love all of our wedding pictures! Our photographer did an AWESOME job! I want to show them off!
5. Everyone keeps asking to see them. Isn't it better on FB where they can look at them at their own leisure without any obligation to comment or acknowledge that they even looked?
Maybe I should already know the answer to this and haven't seen it yet?
Thanks for the help,
ObnoxiousFacebookBride
*****
WHY ARE YOU STILL ON FACEBOOK
Photo by Louie Banks via Fucking Young!
I don't think there's anything wrong with a FB wedding album! (I do, however, think there's something wrong with seven FB wedding albums.)
ReplyDeleteHow about creating a Pinterest board of your 50-100 favorites? Then you can email out the link to the family and friends that would appreciate them the most.
50-100??
DeleteI think it's fine to post an album on facebook (and to be on facebook). I haven't posted any of my wedding photos (well, one of my dog, but most people don't even realize that it's a wedding photo) and people do frequently ask about them. I recently was talking to a not-very-close friend and she mentioned that she was sad to not have seen any photos (she's also thinking about planning her own wedding, so that might contribute), something that shocked me. What? You care about what dress I wore!?! So yeah, if people go to random wedding websites to see wedding photos of people they've never met, surely more than a few just-facebook friends would like to see them too.
ReplyDeleteAlso I think the more important thing than how many photos (if someone doesn't want to look through a thousand, believe me, they won't) is how much it's on people's newsfeed. So maybe it would be best to do just a single album and not a lot of tagging, so your friends don't feel overwhelmed.
The one thing to consider is if you didn't invite a facebook friend who would have expected to be invited.
ReplyDeleteI didn't invite a cousin who was close to me in the past, but we lost touch after he had a falling out with other members of my family. I didn't post any wedding pictures on facebook, but others did. He was hurt because he saw that it wasn't exactly a small and intimate wedding, and he didn't make the 120 person guest-list.
I made a Picasa album and sent out links to people who would be interested and those who asked. To most people, I sent the link to their own picture(s), and they could browse the album if they wanted.
If you are going to make a facebook album, as someone already said, make only one album with carefully chosen photos, that way your friends see it only once on their timeline and can choose whether or not to look at it, instead of being continually bombarded with individual pictures.
I have one FB wedding album. There are 71 photos in the album. And I made sure to credit the photographer.
ReplyDeleteLess is more. I posted one. And then a second for our last (3rd) wedding anniversary.
ReplyDeleteI don't think there's anything wrong with a FB album. It's the easiest way to share these days.
ReplyDeleteI also think less is more. I have some friends who quickly earned the nickname "the insufferable bride" because a) she posted 1,000,000 statii about the wedding, and b) she posted FOUR albums with 150-200 photos in EACH of "getting ready" "wedding party" "ceremony" "reception" ..blah blah blah. I ain't go time for that shit. AND? If your photographer takes 1,000 photos and sends you a B&W version and a color version of EVERY one? for the love of god, PICK ONE. Don't just upload the ENTIRE disc.
I posted 30 engagement pics (out of about 300) and will probably stick to 50-60 wedding photos. I stuck to the rule of thumb of one photo per scene/pose/outfit/whatever. You don't need 100 photos so that you could create a stop motion video as the facial expression of one party changes EVER so slightly from one photo to the next.
clearly I have angst about slutty FB sharing.
I love looking at wedding pictures, but I'm over it after 100, so your 50-60 is perfect. I have a FB friend who loves taking pictures and will post 1000+ photos of a single event AND not do any editing... like, does anyone want to see 16 shots of the maid of honour doing her toast to the bride? TRIM IT DOWN!
DeleteSet up a flickr account and make an album there. you can post a handful of pics on FB and give people the link if they want to see more.
ReplyDeletei like celia's and aline's points. why not make your audience self-selecting? post an iconic photo or two on FB and then say at the same time that you have a non-FB online album with a zillion more, and that folks can message you if they want the link. then you'll know exactly who's seeing what, you won't be subjecting the potentially disinterested and/or sensitive to the full wedding onslaught, and you won't have to worry about, like, unilever or chick-fil-a owning all of your wedding photos when FB's privacy/ownership policies change for the four-millionth time six months from now.
ReplyDeleteDropbox. Private but easy to distribute to people.
ReplyDeleteThis.
DeleteYes...although I'd probably still post 30 pics or so to FB just to satisfy that crowd.
DeleteI don't have a problem with an album of wedding pics on facebook. (As in, 1 album with less than 100 pics.)
ReplyDeleteLike someone else said, another option is to make an account on flickr or picassa or whatever. Some of those services also allow you to make private accounts, so you can send your friends a link and a password to see pics. (Not that you really seem concerned about being private, but I kind of don't like the idea of some random person who searched "wedding dresses" on flicker pinning a photo of me to her "wedding inspiration" pin board and then before you know it your photo is showing up on blogs without any mention of who you are or the photographer who took it.)
75-100 would be perfect. Just enough to paint a full picture of the day, but not so many that it's obnoxious or time-intensive to look at them all.
ReplyDeleteBleh. . .ESB, not at all helpful or realistic. OP post what you want, no one HAS to fucking look at it. Those who want to, will. Simple as that.
ReplyDeleteI agree, no one has to look at it if they don't want to. It's facebook, there are plenty of albums I'll just check out one or two. Not a big deal.
DeletePost the most interesting ones that made your wedding unique - i.e. not a bunch of you. I have seen so many albums where I see some kind of cool decorative design or some kind of custom going on and I want to see more of THAT and all I get is ten shots of the bride with her eyes closed.
ReplyDeleteI posted some of our wedding photos on Facebook because I thought our guests would like to see themselves all dolled up. I chose mostly photos of guests having a great time, but also threw in a few of my husband and me, the decorations we worked so hard on, etc. I think as long as you don't post 500 pictures of yourself, people will enjoy looking at the album.
ReplyDeleteI posted the url to the proofing site as a status. There were enough pictures taken by friends on FB already that an album of pro pics seemed like overkill.
ReplyDeleteI emailed family members (the most email savvy of each family) the url for the proof site as well, but the status got enough exposure via people "liking" it, therefore it showing up on more people's news feeds, that anyone who wanted to go look, could. Anyone who missed it but wanted to see pictures asked told me "omg I want to see wedding pics!" and I told them about the link in my status.
This only works if you aren't constantly updating though. My once every two days statuses didn't bury the proofing status.
candids are fun for facebook... portraits not so much
ReplyDeleteYou should just follow your normal facebook habits. You don't have to follow special etiquette just because they are wedding photos. If you are the the type of person that rarely posts photos then only post a few of your favorites. If you post photos all the time then your friends will expect you to follow suit with your wedding. Just be yourself.
ReplyDeleteI agree with this as well, I barely post anything so I would feel weird posting more than a couple especially since I am barely inviting anyone as it is, but I expected nothing less from the friends who constantly post.
DeleteI think a small FB album (50-75 pics) is totally fine. People who want to look will do so, and people who don't care won't. Simple as that. For closer family members, send them the link to the proofing site with all of the pictures. They'll probably want to see them.
ReplyDeleteI'm not very active on FB, so I didn't put a full wedding album up. Instead, I just posted pictures of several of my guests on their walls. My photographer managed to get a great picture of nearly everyone who came, so I figured they'd want to see them. I also posted a link to my photographer's blog when she did a write-up of our wedding.
I agree with everyone that says < 75 or so is fine.
ReplyDeleteAlthough, I wouldn't worry about being a narcissist or clogging up anyone's feed. If I have to look at everyone's photos of their lunch or their baby's rash, they can all suffer through me posting wedding photos.
I don't really buy into all this hand-wringing over "facebook etiquette". I do all sorts of "rude" things on facebook (delete people, post photos without vetting whom I might offend by posting them, etc.), because I don't take facebook that seriously.
ReplyDeleteListen, it's YOUR facebook page, so post whatever you want. Will people roll their eyes at all your bazillion photos? Probably. But if it's what you want to post, who cares? When I get annoyed with my friends' OMG I'M MARRRIEEEEDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD or BAYBEEEEEEE LOOK IT HAS FOOD ON ITS FACE pictures, I unsubscribe from them until they calm down. They never know, and I stop feeling irritated.
You can't stop people when they get marriage/baby fever. They WILL post a ton of pictures that 99.9% of their friends have no interest in seeing. I just choose not to look if it's getting on my nerves.
100% agreed. The people trying to dictate what others do are more annoying to me than the offenders themselves. THERE IS A HIDE FUNCTION.
DeleteCheers to that. Fuckbook is a part of the social climate, for better or worse. So unsubscribe, ignore the teenbot twats and just drink a mimosa. Or tequila.. tequila makes everything better.
DeleteGet a life, no one cares about your wedding photos except you and your Mother.
ReplyDeleteReally?? I have had SO many people bugging me about my photos. My instinct was: no-one really cares. But they do! They seriously do.
DeleteFemale co-workers REALLY care.
DeleteGet a life?? After I got married I had MANY people asking for photos and they all really took the time to look at them.
DeleteBesides, by this logic, no one cares about anyone else's content on facebook. . .which is a silly attitude considering it's popularity and success.
mmmmmmm female coworker here. i don't care. 1 was plenty.
Delete"Get a life, no one cares about your wedding photos except you and your Mother." - person who posts on wedding site with lots of wedding photos.
Delete... and when you have babies people will REALLY care and will be bugging you to see baby photos too. Don't worry no one is rolling their eyes when you turn around, because your wedding and baby photos are so much more exciting than everyone else's. You are the exception, all of you.
DeletePoor CVB with no one to love them. . .must be a hard.
DeleteI'm someone who really has enjoyed looking at my coworker's/ friends wedding photos. . .so yeah you may have some eye rolling assholes like the above person but that's certainly not everyone.
DeleteI also love seeing Facebook friend's wedding (and baby) photos. I use Facebook to keep in touch with friends from my past. Seeing pictures of them happy and at life milestones makes me all warm and fuzzy.
DeleteI agree with you CVB - sure I enjoy looking at other peoples wedding pics, but to seriously overthink every aspect of it like the OP has just makes me ill.
DeleteDo what ever the fuck you want, but don't think that everyone else is going to totally over analyse your moves as you have done.
Post 1 album, make it 30 nice pics. Done. And now you have time to move on with life and do something important.
Did anyone else get other people posting a shit ton of photos? I wasn't really happy about that. I am pretty introverted and am incredibly protective of my privacy, so when 3 or 4 people made their own albums of my wedding I was a little perturbed.
ReplyDeleteAs far as official wedding photos go, most of our friends are in the wedding industry so most of our vendors were friends. We posted more photos than we ever would have in order to help promote our friends' businesses. I would have been more comfortable with just our first dance and cake cutting photos.
From one introvert to another: Get over it! Be flattered that they love you and your wedding enough to make an album for it. If you're that shy just block everyone from seeing things you're tagged in.
DeleteI had someone once ask me to take down pictures I posted of her wedding, so you are not alone.
DeleteI thought it was pretty dramatic though.
Or just untag yourself.
DeleteYeah, it weirded me out when I got home from my 2 day honeymoon and my entire wedding was posted by my cousins. I asked them to make it a private album just for family.
DeleteI don't really like the internet world having access to my intimate wedding. Even when 100layercake asked to publish them, I declined. I was fine with the photographer using them for her portfolio blog, since she was awesome, but that was it. I just posted a link to her blog post on FB for my friends to see.
If you want, you can also make Facebook albums private, or viewable only to a limited audience.
ReplyDeleteTHANK YOU! Duh.
DeleteMake one of the pics your profile pic. As the photo caption, have a link to a non-FB album or pinterest page with your favorites. That way only the people who are REALLY interested enough in your wedding pics to click on you profile pic will see the link.
ReplyDeleteRemember, you don't owe it to anyone to put things on FB. If they really care they should ask you directly.
Here's what you don't do: You don't make your profile picture a wedding portrait. You don't change your cover to a romantic picture of you and your husband kissing. Unless of course you want to be seen as the kind of woman whose only purpose in life was to get married.
ReplyDeleteRemember, it's not just YOUR facebook page as someone suggested. It's everyone else's news feed too. If you make an album fine - but make it in one sitting. Don't post them over several days.
Preferrably post only pic and link to a flickr or picasa album - it's much less invasive.
Woah. The day I view my profile picture as making a statement regarding my purpose in life is the day I delete my profile. And the internet.
DeleteYeah . . .it's Facebook. . .not a mission statement. So if I posted pics of me in my Halloween costume my self-proclaimed purpose in life is. . .? Flawed.
DeletePshhh, a wedding picture is fine for your profile picture. It's just weird when you still routinely change your profile picture to yet another wedding picture, and your wedding was 4+ years ago.
DeleteOne album is good, like 50 pictures or so. Before you go a-postin' them on Pinterest or Flickr or something, check with your photographer. If you don't post them privately, it could be a serious copyright violation in their minds.
"it's everyone else's news feed too"...you can't be serious. except you probably are.
DeleteI think you take FB a leeeeeetle bit too seriously.
DeleteI just got married, and my profile picture is a wedding picture.
DeleteI have a lot of cool shit in my life that has nothing to do with my relationship status, and none of that went up in flames when I signed the marriage licence.
I don't give a shit what other people post on their facebook. I don't think anyone is going to have a hernia over a few photos I post. This logic is flawed.
My boyfriend's mother told me that his older sister was upset that more people weren't commenting/liking her wedding pictures on facebook, and that I should put up a bunch of comments and like them. I didn't comment on them in the first place because I didn't think they looked very nice.
ReplyDeleteThat's when I decided to deactivate my facebook.
You should put up whatever photos you want, but please do it because you're happy and you want to share that happiness, not because you're seeking the validation of others. You didn't pay a photographer all that money to see how many people would comment on your picture, you did it so you could capture and enjoy those memories YOURSELF for years to come.
You're already self-aware enough to understand that some people find wedding pics on facebook kind of overwhelming, so I doubt you're going to be the kind of person who posts an unreasonable amount.
how about 10 faves? and if people want to see more, they'll tell you.
ReplyDelete(i don't have a good reason in suggesting 10. that's just what i would do.)
@esb <3 also, it sadens me that people spend so much time thinking/talking about FB etiquette.
ReplyDelete@vanessa sound advice. deactivated months ago, too. do not miss the attention-seeking digging for attention.
@the rest of you: get off FB. GO OUTSIDE.
YES.
DeleteNO. Go outside is funny advice from someone. . .on a blog. . .commenting. just because she asked doesn't automatically make her some Facebook-obsessed freak who never leaves her house.
Delete@anonymous #2 - blogs are not facebook. I was commenting from the train, where I read blogs while I commute. I wrote that, in jest, about a bunch of people I have never met commenting on a blog I read. Get over yourself and stop taking things personally.
Deleteand go outside, already. you can bring your laptop/phone/whatever with you and get some sunshine WHILE you facebook/blog/whatever. win-win.
You respond by saying the same thing. . .go outside. That does very little to address the point that she doesn't need to be advised to go outside, she's asking about online ettiquete.
DeleteI didn't say anything about my personal habits or time outside. . .not sure why you're advising me now when talking about the OP.
Facebook isn't evil, people who don't know how to use it... they are the problem.
DeleteSome of these comments are hilarious. Seriously do whatever you want (bearing in mind, if you wish, the guidelines some of the commenters have made). But remember. Its Facebook. In the grand scheme of things it isn't important. Some people will like your photos, others will disregard them and the haters will hate, regardless of what you do. Just do what makes you happy and really don't spend much longer than the time it takes to read all of these comments agonising over what really isn't a big deal. Quit with the recreational worrying.
ReplyDeleterecreational worrying is like the national pastime, though. it's ripe for sponsorship opportunities, i think: "whiskey! the official beverage of recreational worrying," &c.
DeleteI have to admit Lauren that I also indulge in a spot of recreational worrying now and again so perhaps I ought to take my own advice.
DeleteOn the subject of sponsorship though, I'd respectfully suggest gin as an ideal beverage for recreational worriers everywhere (with its supposed depressant qualities).
I like seeing FB photos of weddings I wasn't invited to (meaning weddings of friends I am not super close to- not weddings I was "excluded" from).
ReplyDeleteIt lets me experience the person's wedding in a fleeting and fun way- a chance to say congrats & wish happiness to someone you like but aren't best friends with.
I would say 15-20 is good. It only gets annoying when people post 50 albums of every "stage" of their wedding.
Less than 20. And just don't TAG anyone in them, for that is a dick move.
ReplyDeletewoah. just coming on here at the tail end of the madness. I like less than 20 too, but seems like the over all consensus is 75 pics which seems like... A LOT.
ReplyDeletealso wanted to add that I still don't get engagement pics. and the idea of an "engagement album"? EWE. that is all.
WHY ARE YOU STILL ON FACEBOOK ?
ReplyDeleteUGH HERE IS THE DEAL: You pick no more than 20 pictures. Choose 5 boring as shit kissy pictures for your boring facebook friends to coo over. Then put up only super fucking crazy or hilarious pictures or at least pictures that don't look like everyone else's wedding pictures. The world will be able to fill in the rest!
ReplyDelete