Wedding guest photo upload, straight to your Drive

A QR code on the tables. Guests scan it, choose the photos and videos they took, and every original lands in a folder inside your own Google Drive. No app to install, no account to make, nothing for anyone to delete.

Make the QR code

Wedding guest photo upload is one link, printed as a QR code on the tables. A guest points a phone camera at it, picks photos and videos from their camera roll, and everything arrives in a folder inside your own Google Drive at full resolution. Nothing to install, no account to make, and nothing for guests to browse or delete.

A code on the table

One link, printed on the table cards and the welcome sign.

A guest points a camera

The phone's own photo picker opens, straight from the camera.

Your Drive folder fills up

Full-resolution photos and video, owned by you on arrival.

The photos only your guests have

Your photographer will hand you the formal set. The other half of the day lives on ninety phones — the speeches from the third table, the dance floor at midnight, the ten seconds of your grandmother laughing that nobody else caught.

Getting those off the phones is the whole problem, and every usual answer asks the guest to do something they will not do on a wedding day: install an app, make an account, or remember to send you something next week. A QR code asks for none of that. It is the same file request link this product is built around, printed rather than emailed — and a phone camera is already a QR scanner, so scanning it takes one second and no explaining.

Install an appAt a reception, on venue wifi

Make an accountA password, at 11pm

Remember next weekNobody remembers next week

Point a camera at a cardA phone camera is already a QR scanner

How the wedding photo QR code works

1Create the upload link
Sign in with your Google account and create an upload link for the wedding. A folder for it is created inside your Drive at the same time.
2Download its QR code
Open the link's QR code from your dashboard and download it. It comes as an SVG, so it stays sharp at any size a printer can produce.
3Print it where guests sit
Print it on table cards, an easel sign by the guest book, or the back of the menus — anywhere a guest sits still for a minute.
4Guests scan and upload
Guests point a phone camera at the code, tap the notification, choose photos and videos, and upload. Every file lands in your Drive folder as it arrives.

What a guest sees on their phone

One page, and only one page. No sign-up screen, no download prompt, no app store detour, no branded gallery to get lost in. Whatever you set as the headline is at the top, and underneath it a button that opens the phone’s own photo picker.

The native camera roll picker, where they can select as many photos and videos at once as they like.
A progress bar per file, so it is obvious the upload is happening and when it is finished.
Large videos go up in parts rather than as one fragile transfer, and the move into your Drive resumes on its own if it is interrupted.
A name field, if you turn it on, so you know whose photos these are without playing guess-the-thumbnail.
A confirmation when the files are delivered — and an email receipt, if you switch that on.
Nothing else. No feed of other guests' uploads, no way to delete what anyone has already sent.

Where the photos end up

In your Google Drive, in a folder created for this link, owned by you from the moment the file arrives. There is no vendor gallery holding the originals hostage and no export step after the honeymoon — the photos are simply in your Drive, next to everything else you keep there.

Full-resolution originals. The file that leaves the phone is the file that lands in your Drive, byte for byte.
Videos as well as photos, up to 5 GB per file — enough for a long clip of the speeches shot on a modern phone.
A subfolder per guest, if you switch it on, named after the guest and the moment they uploaded.
Anything you asked at upload time, recorded with the submission, so a name or a table number stays attached to the files.
An email to you when a submission finishes, so you can watch the day arrive without sitting in the dashboard.

How this compares with a wedding photo app or a shared album

The two things couples usually try instead are a wedding photo app and a shared Google Photos album. Both work; both make a trade the QR-code-to-Drive approach does not.

	Drive File RequestNative	Wedding photo app	Shared Google Photos album	Email us your photos
Nothing for guests to install	Yes	No	Mostly	Yes
No account needed to send	Yes	Sometimes	No	Yes
Photos land in	Your Google Drive	The vendor's cloud	A Google Photos album	Your inbox
Full-resolution originals	Yes	Often compressed	Depends on each guest's Photos setting	Compressed or bounced
Video ceiling	5 GB per file	Usually capped per clip	The guest's own storage	About 25 MB per email
Guests see only their own upload	Yes	No	No	Yes
Uploads are final once sent	Yes	Sometimes	No	Yes
Photos stay put after the event	Yes, they are in your Drive	Until the event plan ends	Yes	Yes
Cost	$10 a month, cancel after	A fee per event	Free	Free

The honest version of the trade: a wedding photo app gives guests something to look at — a live feed on a screen at the reception, a shared gallery to scroll the next morning. This does not, and is not trying to. There is no guest-facing album, no slideshow, and no gallery link to send round. What you get instead is that the originals are in your own storage on the night, at full quality, with nobody able to remove them and no plan to keep renewing.

A shared Google Photos album is free and it is genuinely fine, right up to the two points where it isn't: every contributor needs a Google account and has to be signed in, and everyone who joins can see and remove things. That is a lot of friction to hand a guest at 11pm, and it is the same problem Google Forms has with file uploads — the sign-in is not optional. Photos also land in Google Photos rather than Drive, which is a different place with different quality rules.

Setting the link up before the day

Five minutes of setup is the difference between a folder of photos and a folder of mysteries. The settings worth thinking about, in the order they matter:

01Turn on the name field. It is a built-in toggle, not something you have to build, and it is the single most useful thing on the page — it names the subfolder and tells you who to thank.
02Add one custom question if you want more than a name. "Which table were you on?" or "Ceremony or reception?" takes a guest three seconds and saves you an evening of sorting.
03Set the expiry about thirty days after the wedding. Long enough for the guest who meant to do it on the night and did it on the flight home; short enough that the link is not still open a year later.
04Limit the file types to images and video, so the link only accepts what it is for.
05Leave the file count unlimited, and set the size limit high — phone video is far bigger than anyone expects.
06Turn on a subfolder for every submission, so twelve guests give you twelve folders instead of one pile of DSC_0042.
07Open the link on your own phone before you print anything. It takes a minute and it is the only real test.

The same link, pasted into a group chat instead of printed as a code, covers every other occasion — a trip, a party, a reunion — which is what collecting photos from a group walks through.

What to put on the sign

Guests scan a code when they know what it does. A wordless QR on a table card gets ignored; two lines of plain English do not. Something like: "Amelia & Tom — send us your photos. Point your camera here. No app, no sign-up." Then, underneath, the link written out for the one guest whose camera will not cooperate.

Print it at a size a phone can read across a table — around 4 cm square is comfortable — and keep it on matte card rather than glossy, which throws the flash back at the camera. If you have a welcome sign or a photo booth, the same code belongs there too. It is the same link everywhere; you do not need one code per table.

Frequently asked questions

Is there a free wedding guest photo upload?

There is a 24-hour free trial with no card, which is enough to build the link, print the QR code, and test the whole thing — but trial links pause after 24 hours, so it will not still be open on the day. For a wedding, take Pro at $10 a month for the month around the date and cancel afterwards; the photos stay in your Drive either way. A shared Google Photos album is the genuinely free option, at the cost of every guest needing a Google account.

How do I make a QR code for wedding photos?

Create an upload link for the wedding, then open its QR code from your dashboard and download it. It is generated from the link's own URL as an SVG, so it prints sharp on table cards, signs, and menus at any size. There is nothing to generate elsewhere and no third-party QR service involved.

Do guests need an app?

No. The QR code opens a normal web page in whatever browser the phone already has, and the upload button opens the phone's own photo picker. There is no app to install, no account to create, and no password unless you choose to set one.

Does it work with Google Photos?

Uploads go into Google Drive, not Google Photos — the two are separate products, and there is no automatic sync between them. You can add the files to Google Photos yourself afterwards if you want them there. If a Google Photos album is what you are set on, be aware every guest contributing to it needs a Google account and can remove photos from it.

How big can the videos be?

Up to 5 GB per file, and you set the ceiling per link. Large files upload in parts rather than as one long transfer, and the move into your Drive resumes by itself if a connection drops — which matters on a venue's wifi more than anywhere else.

How long does the link stay open?

As long as you want. Set an expiry date when you create the link and it closes itself on that date; thirty days after the wedding is the usual choice. You can also close it by hand at any point, and photos already delivered stay in your Drive.

Can guests see or delete each other's photos?

No. Each guest sees an upload page and nothing else — no album, no feed, no folder, and no way to remove anything that has already arrived. That is the main structural difference from a shared album, where every contributor can browse the whole thing and delete their own contributions long after the fact.

Set it up before the invitations go out

A link, a QR code, and a folder in your own Google Drive waiting for the photos.

Get started free