Do guests need internet to upload wedding photos?
Yes, at the moment of sending: a photo leaves the phone only over Wi-Fi or mobile data. What it does not need is to happen at the venue. The QR code, the six-character event code and the link all open the same page from anywhere, and that page takes uploads until the event expires: 14 days from creation on the free plan, 12 months from the upgrade on the paid plan ($19.99 (£15.99 in the UK), once). A guest in a cellar with one bar takes the photos now and sends them from the car, the hotel or the sofa on Sunday. Below: what the page does when the signal is poor, what a dropped upload looks like, and what to print next to the code.
What it costs
- Free: 20 photos per guest, kept 14 days from when you create the event
- Paid: $19.99 (£15.99 in the UK) per event for unlimited photos and videos per guest, kept up to 12 months
- One-time payment. No subscription and no fee per guest.
Does the page load on a weak connection?
It is a web page, not an app, so the answer is the one for any web page: slowly on one bar, not at all on none. What arrives first is the page itself: the event name, the PIN prompt if the event has one, the box for the guest’s name and the upload button. The gallery loads under it as small previews, a thumbnail the uploading phone made rather than the full photo, a screenful at a time and more only as the guest scrolls; a full-size photo is fetched only when someone taps it. Once open, the page checks for new photos on its own a few times a minute and asks the server only for what has arrived since it last looked, so a weak connection is not spent downloading the grid again.
Uploading is the heavier direction. The original file goes up unchanged, a photo up to 10 MB, a video up to 200MB on the paid plan, and the page gives that transfer no time limit: a long video on a weak signal is allowed to crawl rather than be cut off. The bar on the file’s line moves in steps, one per stage, not byte by byte, so a still bar on a slow connection is a file in transit; a failed file says so in red.
What happens if an upload fails halfway?
Each file is its own upload, a few files at a time, and each goes in three steps: the page asks for an upload ticket, sends the file to storage, then reports it as done. The two small requests are tried again when the answer never comes: three more tries, 1, 3 and 7 seconds apart, and before each one the page waits up to 30 seconds if the phone reports no network, so a phone that drops off the venue Wi-Fi for a moment has not used up its tries by the time it is back. If the file transfer itself fails or storage refuses it, the page starts that file over once, from a fresh ticket. The finishing report is retried without ever sending the file again, so a photo that reached storage is not uploaded twice and does not count twice against the free plan’s 20 photos per guest. After about 2 minutes of trying one step, the page gives up on that file.
What the guest sees then is the progress panel in the corner of the page. The file’s line turns red and says “Network error – please try again”, or “Upload failed” when storage refused it; the files that got through show a green check and are already in the gallery; the header counts the uploaded files against the total, with the number of errors beside it, and the panel stays open, until the guest closes it, as long as a line is red. There is no retry button and nothing is kept for later: the guest picks the failed photo from the camera roll again, on the same page, when the signal is back. Nothing is uploaded in the background or from a page the guest has left; what was not sent is still in the camera roll.
Can guests upload later from home?
Yes, and for a venue with poor signal that is the plan, not the fallback. The window is calendar time, not party time: a free event takes uploads for 14 days from the day it was created, a paid one for 12 months from the day it was upgraded, and the same QR code, code and link open the same page the whole time. The QR code never changes; what ends is the event behind it. Uploads from home land in the same gallery, and a phone that typed the PIN at the venue opens the page without it for a week.
So the ask has two halves. On the day, from the microphone or on the sign: “Scan the code and add what you’ve got. If the signal’s bad in here, do it from the car.” The morning after, in the group chat, the link itself rather than a photo of the QR code, because a link is tapped and a picture of a QR code is not: “The wedding photos are here: [link], PIN as on the sign. Add yours before you forget.” If the free window is short for your crowd, the upgrade is the fix: $19.99 (£15.99 in the UK) once, 12 months from that day, same code on the signs. The rest of the collecting is on how to collect wedding photos from guests.
Should we give guests the venue Wi-Fi?
If the venue has guest Wi-Fi, yes, and put it where the QR code is. One line under the code on the table card, “Wi-Fi: [network] · password: [password]”, turns a stone-walled reception room into a connected one. Ask the venue a couple of weeks before: the network name, the password, whether it copes with a room full of phones at once, and whether it sends guests through a sign-in page first, which makes uploads fail halfway more often than a weak signal does. The sign designer on the paid plan lays out the QR code and your text for a table card, an A5 or an A4 sheet; it has no Wi-Fi field, so the Wi-Fi line goes on the venue’s own card or on a card you print yourself.
If the Wi-Fi is bad or there is none, say so instead of hoping: “Signal’s poor in here. Take the photos, scan the code, and upload from the car or tomorrow.” Guests who know the plan wait instead of giving up. Venues that keep the code on every table as part of the room print the Wi-Fi line once, on the same card; that setup is on photo sharing for venues, and the code itself on the wedding QR code.
Does the QR code work abroad?
Yes. The QR code is the event’s web address drawn as squares, and a phone that can open a web page can open it in any country, on any network, roaming data included. There is no app to be missing from a store and no country check on the page. The page shows in the language of the site the event was created on, wherever it is opened, so the cousin who flew in from Lisbon sees the same page as the table next to her, and the files are stored with Supabase in London (UK) whichever country they were sent from. A guest without data abroad does what a guest in a cellar does: shoots now, uploads on the hotel Wi-Fi tonight. For a destination wedding the paid plan’s 12 months matter most, because the uploads come in over the week people fly home.
What about the photographer’s photos?
This page is about the photos guests take. It does not replace your photographer, whose work arrives weeks later through their own gallery, edited and in order, and has nothing to do with the venue’s Wi-Fi. The guest gallery is the other set: the ceremony from the third row, the speeches from the table, the dance floor at midnight. Only one of the two depends on a connection at the venue, and as this page says, not even that one has to.
Connection questions, answered
Can guests upload wedding photos without internet?
No. The upload page runs in the phone's browser, and a file leaves the phone only over Wi-Fi or mobile data. What a guest can do without a connection is take the photos: they stay in the camera roll until there is one, and the page accepts them until the event expires, 14 days from creation on the free plan or 12 months from the upgrade on the paid plan.
Does a failed upload count against the free plan’s limit?
No. The free plan counts the 20 photos per guest that actually arrived. A file that failed on the way is not recorded, and a finishing report that was lost on the way back is retried without sending the file again, so nothing is counted twice.
How much data does an upload use?
The original file, unchanged: a photo up to 10 MB, a video up to 200 MB on the paid plan, plus a small preview the phone makes before sending. A guest on a metered plan waits for Wi-Fi; the window allows it.
Do uploads continue if the guest closes the page?
No. The upload runs in the open page: a file still on its way when the page is closed is not sent, and nothing is kept for later. Finished files are saved and already in the gallery; the rest are picked again next time.
What happens to an upload after the event has expired?
It is refused: the upload request is turned away, and a scan of the code shows a page saying the event may have expired instead of the gallery. Everything already uploaded is deleted the day after expiry on both plans, so download the ZIP before the date, or upgrade before it.