Wedding hashtags stopped working. Here is the wedding hashtag alternative that did not

Why did the wedding hashtag stop working?

A hashtag was never an album. It is a search: type the tag and you see the public posts that carry it. For a few years that looked like the same thing, because a lot of people posted their weekends publicly and put the couple’s tag on the sign at the bar. The trouble is everything a search cannot see.

• Private accounts. Instagram’s own help centre says a post from a private account that carries a hashtag does not appear in that hashtag’s results. Your cousin with a locked profile can tag every photo correctly and you will still see none of them.
• People who do not post. The guests who take the warmest photos at a wedding are often the ones who never put anything online: grandparents, the quiet table, the friend who keeps everything for the family chat.
• Stories and chats. Much of what does get shared now goes into a story that disappears after a day, or into a group chat. A hashtag sees neither.
• Everyone else’s wedding. A short, memorable tag is a tag another couple chose too. The page you are sent mixes your day with strangers’ unless the tag is unusual enough that nobody can spell it.

Put those together and the hashtag gives you a thin, public slice of the evening, from the guests who are most comfortable posting, mixed with anything else that happens to share the tag. It is not that guests stopped taking photos. It is that the photos stopped going anywhere a hashtag can reach.

What does a shared album do that a hashtag cannot?

The difference that matters most is the first row. A guest does not need to post, follow or tag anything to put a photo in a shared album. They do not even need to think of it as sharing: they are handing the photo to the couple.

How does the album work on the day?

With Mosaikin, guests scan a QR code on the table or open a link from the invitation, and add photos from their phone’s browser. There is no app to install and no account to make, and nobody is asked for an email address; typing a name is optional. See Do I need an account to join an event?

• Photos and videos both. Videos up to 50 MB each go in with the same buttons, and a guest can choose hundreds of photos at once.
• On the big screen as they arrive. The live slideshow takes each photo the moment it is published, which is the cue for the next table to join in. See How do I run the live slideshow? and the wedding photo wall.
• Nothing public by accident. Every photo has its location data removed and passes a safety check before it appears, and you can switch on Require approval to see each one first. See Are photos checked before they appear?

Where a hashtag lived on a chalkboard by the bar, the code goes on every table and on the screen itself. QR code for wedding photos covers printing and placing it, and the free wedding QR code sign maker makes a sign for it in a few minutes.

Should you still have a wedding hashtag?

If you like it, keep it. Some guests will want to post, and a tag is a pleasant way for them to find each other’s posts afterwards. Just stop treating it as the way you collect photos. Put the QR code first on the sign and the tag second, and say so from the microphone: “Photos for us go in the album; post wherever you like as well.”

The two do not compete. Nothing in the album goes on social media unless a guest puts it there themselves, and a guest who posts a photo can add the same one to the album in a couple of taps. What you lose by dropping the hashtag as your plan is nothing you were getting anyway.

What do you keep afterwards?

The album stays open, so photos added on the train home and the morning after join the same gallery. On an upgraded event you download the lot as one file, every photo at full display size with camera metadata removed and each file named after the guest who took it. See What is in the photo archive?

On an upgraded event the archive stays available for 5 years. A free event is kept for six months after the event date, as the Host Terms set out. Either way, take your own copy in the first week: it is one click and one file.

Creating the event is free, with up to 30 photos. To keep everything, upgrade that one event with a single payment, Premium £89 for most weddings, with no subscription. See pricing, and weddings on Mosaikin for the whole picture.