How to use a QR code for wedding photos

A QR code is only a link. The question is where it sends your guests:

• A shared album link (Google Photos, iCloud). Free, but guests have to upload photos they’ve already taken, usually after the wedding.
• An upload page from a wedding photo service. Guests pick photos from their camera roll and send them in.
• A guest camera, like Roll Call. Guests shoot with it, and every photo goes straight into your gallery.

Avoid codes that send guests to an app store. Every guest who has to install something is a guest who probably won’t.

If you use a shared album, copy its share link and turn it into a QR code with any free generator. Test it from a phone that isn’t signed in to your account.

If you use a guest camera or an upload service, you don’t need a generator: the service gives you the code. Roll Call gives you a QR code the moment you create the event, plus table tents, a welcome sign and an order-of-service insert with your names on them, ready to print at home.

• Every table. This does most of the work. Guests sit down, notice it, and scan it while they wait.
• The welcome sign. For guests arriving before they find their seats.
• The order of service. So the ceremony gets shot too.
• The screen, if there is one, between speeches or during the meal.

Print the codes at least 3 cm wide, on matte paper if you can, and keep them away from candles that put glare on them.

A code on its own gets ignored. A short line next to it tells guests why they should bother: “Scan for your camera. 24 shots each. The photos develop at midnight.” Then have the MC say it out loud once. Here’s a script.

• Scan it with an iPhone and an Android phone.
• Try it on mobile data, not only Wi‑Fi.
• Check the venue’s signal. If it’s weak, use a camera that saves photos on the phone and uploads later. Roll Call does.
• Make sure the people you want in can get in, and nobody else can, if the gallery is private.