Will You Ban—Or Encourage—Social Media at Your Wedding?

Monkey Business

There has been a lot of talk over the past months regarding weddings and social media. Specifically, the posting of pictures from the wedding on Facebook and Instagram. (How much you yap about your wedding on social media—well, that’s a whole other post.) And the talk is on both sides.

Couples who are all for it encourage the taking and posting of photos; request that they receive copies of all of them; and even try to be publicly organized by creating custom hashtags for Instagram and whatnot so that all the photos of their wedding live in one happy place. (For a guest’s take on why Instagramming weddings is awesome, please read this essay on Jezebel, which hilariously hits the nail on the head. It also links to a CBS Miami story on this topic.)

Couples who are not into it are more and more requesting that photos—sometimes just of them specifically, sometimes of the entire wedding day in general—not be posted of their wedding on any social media. It seems like sometimes that only pertains to during the event—they want their guests to enjoy themselves without their faces in their phones and want to control the revealing of their Big Day themselves—and sometimes that means at all. They wish for you to pretend it didn’t even happen as far as social media is concerned, ever.

I mean, here is basically what I personally think about it:

• Under no circumstances should pictures of the bride herself be posted anywhere—honestly, I don’t think they should even be texted to anyone who isn’t physically standing next to her, unless she gives her specific OK—before she is revealed completely and publicly in person to the whole of her groom, family and wedding guests. I don’t care if anyone actually verbally instructs this, either, because it should seriously go without saying.
• Whatever I feel about it, whatever you feel about it, whether or not pictures get posted during the wedding is totally up to the couple. Just like I always say concerning bridesmaids not liking their dress, it doesn’t really matter what you think. It’s their wedding, it’s their day, it’s their privacy, it’s their call.
• Couples swiping their guests’ phones is a bit much. More than that, really—I don’t actually think it’s anywhere within their rights, even as the couple getting married that day, to confiscate the cell phones of grown adults. If they don’t want photos posted of them on social media then they should certainly make that request known—and it should certainly be heeded—but it’s just that in the end, really. A request. It’s not a command, because unless you are of high military rank, that’s not really how human interaction works, and it’s frankly a bit nuts to try and wield that much control over your friends and family. You cannot take their personal belongings away like some sort of deranged bridal TSA agent.

But we’re curious about your feelings on the subject. Are you going to request a kibosh on the posting of photos during your wedding? Or are you going to try to encourage it and make it easy for friends and family to share them? Tell us in the comments!

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