While some brides are embracing technology at their wedding, others are shying away from guests using cellphones, iPads and digital cameras on their wedding day. A tech-free, or “unplugged” wedding means asking guests not to use devices either during the ceremony or for the entire wedding, as well as refraining from posting images online until after the wedding. Whether you love this idea, or still need some convincing, we’ve got 10 reasons that just might have you going old school!

1. Get brownie points with your photographer

Search online for “unplugged wedding” and you will read countless anecdotes from wedding photographers of guests getting in the way of wedding photos because they wanted to snap their own photo with a cellphone. A flash from another digital camera or cell phone can also ruin professional photos. Most photographers will be over the moon if you just let them do their job without interfering.

2. Your guests will be fully present

Do you really want your guests on their phones during dinner or during the reception? Not having technology means everyone is paying attention to what is going on. After all, you have planned a huge day for everyone; experiencing it through the screen of a phone or camera is just not the same as being wholly present.

3. People will talk to each other

Not having phones means people can have conversations with each other instead of looking at their phones. Ensure your guests that your photographer will take a lot of candid shots of everyone, so guests don’t have to worry about snapping their own photos or interrupting conversations to take photos.

4. You can enjoy the moment

Having an “unplugged” wedding also applies to the bride and groom. Relax and be in the moment instead of snapping photos with your own phone or live tweeting every minute of your wedding. Even if you’re not having a tech-free wedding, give your phone to your Maid of Honor to keep for the day or better yet, leave it at home.

5. You will get the photos you want

This might sound vain, but having a tech-free wedding means the photos you have from the wedding will be the flattering photos you want from your photographer and not grainy, cellphone photos with unflattering angles. You might want to sweeten the deal by ensuring your guests they will have full access to the final wedding photos after the wedding, so they don’t have to worry about taking their own photos.

6. You will cut down on noise and distractions

No one wants a ringing cellphone or message notification interrupting their ceremony. Having 50 phone cameras clicking and flashing at once might not be pleasant for everyone either.

7. There is less chance that you will miss out on something

When people are engrossed in their cellphones, they tend to tune out what is going on around them. You don’t want to miss the cake-cutting, first dance or toasts because you were too busy checking your email. The wedding should be the most important thing going on that day.

8. Have more privacy

Some people love posting every moment of their waking lives online, while others are much more private about sharing their lives on the internet. If you are the latter, nicely tell your guests to not post any photos of the wedding online and to keep the photos for themselves.

9. Avoid social media awkwardness

Having other people post photos of your wedding that they took can also lead to some awkwardness. For example, there may be photos you don’t like, party photos that got a little too rowdy or maybe someone who wasn’t invited will see the photos and comment.

10. You will save time

When guests are getting in the way of photos with their own cameras instead of letting the photographer do his or her job, your photo session will take longer. With no technology at your wedding, your photographer will not have to wait for others to set up and snap their own photos.

Photo one: PurplePeonyCouture ; Photo two: PerfectSaltStudio; Photo three:GlamazonGraphics ; Photo four: FatAndSassyInk; Photo Five: JadeForestDesign; Photo Six: ruffledblog.com

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When planning their wedding, Jessica and Tyler quickly realized that their budget was going to be tight, so they decided to choose a couple of things that mattered most to them. With their attention on these details, they were able to let the other less important wedding day items on their list fall away.

An elopement in the Smokey Mountains, with photographer Stacy Paul, turned out to be the perfect fit for Jessica and Tyler. The couple still can’t help but smile when looking back on their images from this beautiful day. It’s easy to see why!

Jessica, 26 & Tyler, 25 

Location: Great Smokey Mountains National Park, North Carolina

Wedding Date: December 7, 2014

Number of Guests: 0

Wedding Cost: $3,500

Wedding Ceremony Location: Mingus Mill, Cherokee, North Carolina

Wedding Reception Location: We didn’t have a reception.

Why did you have an intimate wedding?

Initially our decision to elope was a financial one. After talking over different options, we decided that the one thing we wanted more than anything else was amazing photos. We spent the bulk of our budget on our dream photographer. That didn’t leave much left for anything else, so we got creative. I found my dress on ebay, our rings were passed down from my grandparents, and Tyler made my bouquet from foraged greenery. 

Once we were up in the mountains it became clear that regardless of our budget, we were having the perfect wedding for us. Having that time together without the stress of a conventional wedding was ideal. 

What are some the challenges that you faced planning an intimate wedding?

Our main issue was our budget. Initially we felt overwhelmed at the expense of everything. Once we made the decision to focus on only the things that were truly important to us, everything came together. 

Was it difficult to pare down the guest list?

We struggled with the thought of not having our families and friends with us on our wedding day, but in the end we compromised by holding a large celebratory party in our home a few weeks after the wedding. 

Did you have any ‘issues’ with the small guest list from friends and family? If so, how did you address them?

No guests, no issues. 

What were the highlights of the ceremony?

Mingus Mill is beautiful. Water from the creek still flows through the original flume to the mill, spilling over in some places creating makeshift waterfalls. We held our short ceremony in front of one of the larger cascades. I loved feeling the cool air rushing against my face as we exchanged our vows. It was nothing short of magical.

What were the highlights of the reception?

Because there was no reception, we had plenty of time to explore the area with Stacy, our photographer, and take tons of amazing photos. It was more important to us to have those images to look back on then it was to have a reception. I wasn’t completely convinced that we had made the right decision in forgoing the reception until we got the photos. They are breathtaking. Every time I look at them I’m taken back to that day in the mountains, and I can’t help but smile. 

What was the best thing about having an intimate wedding?

For the most part, our wedding was stress free. I’m sure that had we gone a different route and tried to hold a more traditional ceremony and reception that we both loved with our limited budget, stress levels would have been high. I love that I was able to enjoy every second of my wedding.

What advice do you have for couples who are considering an intimate wedding?

Don’t let friends and family pressure you into doing what they want. It’s your wedding, not theirs. Also, decide as a couple what is really important to you, and focus your budget in those places. 

Vendors:

Photographer: Stacy Paul Photography

Despite living half a world apart, Cherise and Martin found each other and fell head over heels in love. After talking and dreaming about their wedding for quite some time, the couple finally decided on a pop-up wedding in Las Vegas. Cherise and Martin’s elopement on the El Dorado Dry Lake Bed in Boulder City, is truly one for the books. The special details, the delicious donuts (we’ll take 12, please!), and the breathtaking scenery really reflect the couple’s adventurous and eclectic spirit. 

A big thanks to photographer Ashley Marie Myers, who documented Cherise and Martin’s wedding perfectly!

 Cherise, 31 & Martin, 41

Location:  The El Dorado Dry Lake Bed, Boulder City, Nevada, United States

Wedding Date:  June 12, 2015

Number of Guests: Only one guest, Ruby, our celebrant’s gorgeous German Shepherd!

Wedding Cost: Not including our flights or accommodation, our wedding costs weren’t as low as you can get them in Las Vegas but we still kept the costs under USD $2,500.

Wedding Ceremony Location:  The El Dorado Dry Lake Bed, Boulder City, Nevada, United States

Wedding Reception Location:  Just the two of us went for a beautiful dinner at The Paris Hotel’s Eiffel Tower Restaurant.  It was a surprise organized by Martin for us at the best table in the restaurant in the corner window, watching the Bellagio fountains dance.

Why did you have an intimate wedding? 

Martin is British and I’m Australian, so we always knew it would be difficult to find a location where everyone we love could attend.  We chose to have a solo ceremony together in the United States and then follow it up with celebrations in both the United Kingdom and Australia with our family and friends.

What are some the challenges that you faced planning an intimate wedding? 

Aside from experiencing fraud on our bank card on the day of the wedding and not being able to get our $60 cash out to purchase our wedding license, our main challenge was not having friends and family there to celebrate with us.  It was emotional not having everybody there on such a special day.

Was it difficult to pare down the guest list?

 No, given there was no one attending!

Did you have any ‘issues’ with the small guest list from friends and family? If so, how did you address them?

 Everyone was really supportive of us getting married the way we did.  They were very disappointed they couldn’t attend in person but we felt so much support and excitement from all of them.  We have a couple of little girls in the family who are very much looking forward to joining us in our celebrations in our home countries!

What were the highlights of the ceremony?

 If you asked Martin, he’d say the donuts!  Honestly though, the best parts were all thanks to how organized, relaxed and easy-going our celebrant, Victoria, and our photographer, Ashley were. They made us feel so comfortable and we just had such a blast on the day, as you can probably tell from the pictures. Other highlights were definitely the sky and the environment surrounding us.  We were married at sunset on a dry lake bed just before a hot storm rolled in.  The landscape was so dramatic; we’ll never forget it.

What were the highlights of the reception?

 Sitting in a restaurant…married! Something we’d talked so much about and looked forward to and then there was that moment, we had done it and were married!

What was the best thing about having an intimate wedding?

 While we wished everyone was there with us, it was great to just be able to be completely relaxed and comfortable.  It was just us out there, crazy about each other and just enjoying ourselves and having fun.  Lots of laughing, lots of dancing and joking; it’s exactly how we are together and to have that on our wedding day was perfect.  We feel very lucky to not have had the stressful time leading up to the wedding that you sometimes hear about couples experiencing!

What advice do you have for couples who are considering an intimate wedding? 

Do it!  You can always have a laid-back celebration with everyone else after the actual ceremony.  

Vendors:

Photographer: Ashley Marie Myers

Wedding Celebrant: Victoria Hogan, Florapop

All photographs are memento mori. To take a photograph is to participate in another person’s (or thing’s) mortality, vulnerability, mutability. Precisely by slicing out this moment and freezing it, all photographs testify to time’s relentless melt.” Susan Sontag

We love this quote because we also happen to believe that photographs are pretty darn important. They document our lives, preserve our memories, and tell our stories to future generations. What did we look like? Who did we love? Where were the places that made our hearts sing?

Never have we lived in a time where photographs have been more abundant. We are the most well-documented generation to date, but ironically, so many of the images that we take are buried or lost forever in a technological black hole. Our digitized images stay imprisoned in hard drives and a myriad of other tech devices, where they never see the light of day. The same is true for wedding photos. So many couples have a plethora of gorgeous images from their wedding day locked away in files on their computers and mobile phones. Sadly, it is not unusual for images to disappear forever during a hard drive crash or a lost cell phone. We think that’s a shame because it doesn’t have to be that way.

The folks at Shutterfly have made it easy and economical to free your digital images from hard drives and mobile devices and use them to create everything from your wedding invitations to beautiful books that will become treasured keepsakes. Why not use some of those gorgeous engagement photos sitting idle on your hard drive to create your wedding invitations? Shutterfly has a lovely assortment of stationery in on-trend designs, including elegant foil-stamped Save-the-Dates and tons of personalization options that can translate from the invitation to coordinating RSVP and enclosure cards.

Not sure which design you love the most? No problem! Shutterfly encourages you to go ahead and experiment with different designs before committing to your invitation style. By using promo code 5WEDINVITES, you can customize five free samples of wedding invitations.

And if you are looking for meaningful gifts for your wedding party or loved ones, you can use your favorite wedding photos to create everything from personalized jewelry  for your bridesmaids (the photo charms are adorable!) to luggage tags for your groomsmen. Shutterfly has a great variety of personalized gifts to continue sharing your special memories with your family and friends or even to accessorize your home, including pillows, throws and coasters.

If you are a bride who just can’t fit a photographer’s professional wedding album into your budget, a photo book from Shutterfly is the perfect alternative. Wedding albums can cost thousands of dollars, which is outside of the budget of many couples. Shutterfly, on the other hand, will allow you to create a personalized, high-quality photo book at a fraction of the cost.

Shutterfly’s premium photo books have so many awesome features. Not only are they easy peasy to create (just drag and drop!), they are also completely customizable, so your book truly reflects your own style. Most of the premium books offer double-thick, layflat pages – which make them perfect to display on your coffee table – or even at your wedding as a guest book (we love this idea!). Couples can choose either crushed silk or genuine leather for the cover.

Shutterfly knows that sorting through all your wedding photos and choosing favorites can be a daunting task, so they have created an uber convenient Make My Book service, which allows you to sit back while their experts do the work. Simply choose a book size and style, then upload all your photos; they’ll even curate the best photos if you like! Your album will be ready in as little as three business days, and you pay a small design fee only if you order the book. What’s not to love about that?

With all these wonderful ways to use your engagement and wedding photos, isn’t it about time you set your beautiful images free? Go to Shutterfly and get started!

*Sponsored post.

Dear Creative Types,

I get asked on occasion what advice I would give beginning photographers, and aside from the typical answers of what gear I use, what cologne I wear, and how I keep a rocking dad-bod (lots of bad food choices), the final and most important answer I give is this: shoot from your heart. Turn off the background noise and remember why you’re a photographer in the first place.

If you’re a new photographer, especially a new wedding photographer, you’re going to be inundated with the “shoot to get published” mantra that prances around gleefully in our industry like a caffeinated child from every social media outlet imaginable. You may even be tempted to join the thousands of photographers shooting to impress the elite few that perch themselves on top of the massive pile of vintage, lace, burlap, and faded yellow broken dreams that so many try to climb in an effort to attain fame and fortune.  But what happens when the fame and fortune doesn’t arrive? My advice is to step away from the pile.

If you shoot for you, and create from your heart what it is that you see, not what some intern behind a desk at a wedding publication tells you is popular, you’ll be light years ahead of everyone else trying to get noticed. If you create good, solid images, blogs and websites will contact you and ask for your work.

If you listen to what most of the wedding industry tells you is popular, or a good photo, or blog worthy, or has a chance of getting published, you’ll miss really great, meaningful photos because you won’t be looking for them. Like this photo, for example:

As much as the wedding industry would love for me to stick grandma on a vintage table in the middle of a field in an antique dress while a herd of miniature, organic, vegan, vintage horses galloped by while pulling the bride wearing a designer dress in a diamond studded, locally sourced, Pacific Northwest Approved, handmade chariot, that’s not real.

Ten years from now, no one’s going to care about how many likes/shares/butt grabs/atta boy’s you got with your really cool vintagegasm of a photo shoot, if you missed basic shots like this one.

But wait! What about getting published and being famous and popular!?

Well. About that.

See, at some point in this gigantic commode of vintage and floral arrangements more expensive than your car and Cool Kids Clubs, the idea of shooting a wedding to make your clients happy and possibly getting some attention turned in to shooting to get attention and possibly making your clients happy.

And for all of you on the edge of your seats about to cry into your Pinterest lists, hear me; shooting details and decor is fine. It has its place. It’s a small place, but it has one. But when those things become more of the focus than the actual people and love stories you’re hired to shoot in the first place, you’ve completely missed the point.

Shoot your details. Shoot your models and your antique dresses made from the tears of vegans and beard hair of hipsters. Shoot your bouquets that are larger than the bride. Shoot your fancy plates. But in all of that shooting, remember that 10 years from now no one’s going to give a flying rip if you got published when you missed shots like the one above while trying to get popular.

Your clients will never call you crying a few weeks after their wedding when a loved one passes away unexpectedly asking for pictures of plates.

Shoot what matters.

The end.

Brett Birdsong is based out of the Midwest and escapes frequently for destination weddings internationally and within the U.S. When he’s not photographing or writing, he can be found dancing for tips in Key West, or sitting under his favorite cork tree. He is very happy.
Photos: Brett Birdsong