3 Reasons Instagram is Ruining Your Wedding Memories

Editor’s Note: This post was originally published on Huffington Post – written by yours truly. 🙂

I love Instagram, don’t get me wrong. It’s an awesome way to document your life and keep in touch with friends. It’s also a whole lot less invasive and ad-driven than Facebook. As someone who has a wedding photo and video app, I’m going to sound a bit hypocritical, but here’s why Instagram is ruining your wedding memories:

When you think about your wedding journey, what do you picture?

• The DIY projects you spent months creating
• Your dress fittings with your Mom or Dad tearing up as they see their little girl spin around
• Going out with your besties to celebrate your final days as a single girl
• Your friends and family coming together from all across the country to celebrate with you

Everyone is snapping photos and video on their phones during your engagement, bachelorette, bachelor parties, showers, as well as at your wedding itself. I just hope they’re not doing it on Instagram. Wait, what’s so bad about Instagram??? Well, you and your friends are out there capturing these memories on their cell phones, but when you post it to Instagram:

• It’s not permanent
• You can’t get other people’s photos (or videos)
• You can’t do anything with it
• Face it. It’s just gone.

That’s not to mention the fact that your wedding guests are spending half the reception Instagramming and commenting on each other’s photos rather hitting on bridesmaids on the dancefloor — as it should be. But, that’s another topic.

When I say Instagram isn’t permanent I mean you don’t actually have the photos. And even if you create a wedding hashtag, all you can do is look at it — on Instagram. Yes, you can see the photos in which you’re tagged or that are in your hashtag, but you can’t actually download them (without some serious hacking). Lastly, what are you going to be able to do with those low-resolution square photos? Not a whole lot. And if you can somehow get the videos (doubt it), they are going to be too compressed to use.

So what can you do about it? Simple. Have your friends make sure everything is saved to camera roll in their Instagram settings. They can import from camera roll to the WeddingMix app and upload to your project after the wedding if they’d like. Then, they can Instagram away (as long as they drink up and party). Just keep in mind that any videos filmed on Instagram will be saved as square to the camera roll, and they’ll be a mashup of everything they shot while pressing the record button (while drunk on the dancefloor hitting on bridesmaids).