So many things in life are now digital, including your wedding photos.  Most couples will receive their wedding photos digitally through an online gallery or a USB.  I am here to tell you that technology fails and USB drives are easily lost or broken.  And just like that, your wedding photos are gone.  But have no fear, I am here to help you make sure you keep your wedding photos to pass down through the generations.  I mean, who doesn’t love seeing how young their grandparents looked in their wedding photos?

Print – The Ultimate Backup for Your Photos

Have you heard the phrase “print is dead?”  I strongly disagree!  The chances of a computer crashing and losing your files is way higher than someone stealing photographs off your wall or your house burning down.  Printing your wedding photos is one of the best way to back up your images!  Here are some great ideas on how to print your images:

• Wedding Album – A book of your favorite wedding images!  This is usually your first family heirloom to pass down to your children and grandchildren.
• Famed Pictures – Print you pictures, frame them, and display them in your home!  There are so many options for framing your photographs and displaying them in your home, you are sure to find something that fits with your aesthetic.
• Specialty Prints – There are many variations of specialty prints that you can order that make your photos really stand out.  The most popular is gallery wraps.  But, wood prints and metal prints are becoming more popular.  My personal favorite is prints that are mounted on a bamboo mount.

Multiple Copies Of The Digital Files

In backpacking there is a phrase that “two is one and one is none”.  That is to say you should have two of everything you need because, if one is lost, you are out of luck.  Now with digital files, it may not be as serious as running out of water while backpacking, but your wedding images are still crazy important!  Have at least two copies of your wedding images.  Preferably on different types of media.  Remember when floppy discs were all the rage?  What about CDs?  Now it is USB.  Newer laptops are being built without CD drives.  What happens if all your wedding images were on a CD?!  Here are some good options for storing your digital files.  I would choose at least two:

• Writable CD/DVD
• Computer Disc Drive (Internal Hard Drive)
• USB (safely stored, these guys are so small)
• External Hard Drive

Cloud or Offsite Storage of Your Wedding Photos

Ok, so now you have at least two copies of your wedding photos and hopefully some gorgeous prints hanging in your home.  But what happens on the off chance that your house does catch on fire?  If you have all copies of your wedding photos in your house, they are now all gone!  For this reason, I suggest having an ‘off-site’ storage solution.  Which really just means giving a copy of your images to your mom to keep in her house.  Or, you can also use a cloud storage system.  This is an online storage of all your images that you can access from anywhere at anytime.  Here are some popular cloud storage companies for your images:

• Amazon Prime
• iCloud
• Google Drive
• Shoebox
• Dropbox

Backup Regularly

My last tip is to backup your photos regularly.  All electronics have an expiration date.  At some point they will stop working and you will be unable to retrieve your pictures.  I would suggest creating a new copy of your photos every few years, depending on which electronic storage you decided to use.  And as technology changes, stay relatively up to date with the new storage systems and move your images over.  You don’t want to be searching Goodwill for a DVD drive you can connect to your PC so you can look at wedding photos again!

Whew, now all our wedding photos are backed up and we can sleep a little easier at night knowing we will be able to show our grandchildren how young and in love we were on our wedding day.

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