Wedding guest camera: what it is, how it works, how to choose

What a wedding guest camera is

It is not a device. It is a way of pointing every phone already at the wedding at one place. The couple makes one link, puts a QR code where guests are, and whatever guests send lands in one album instead of in forty camera rolls, three group chats and a hashtag nobody used after 9pm.

The category exists because the photos guests take are the ones the photographer cannot: the table before the speeches, the face of the person watching the first dance, the bit at 1am. Those are worth collecting, and until someone collects them, they are simply lost.

What makes a wedding guest camera good

• —No guest app. Scanning the code is the whole install.
• —No guest account. Nobody signs up to send a photo.
• —QR access. One code on the table reaches every phone at it.
• —iPhone and Android. The same browser page on both; no platform is second.
• —A private album guests cannot browse. They send; only the couple sees.
• —Photo and video from the same code, not two products.
• —Voice. A spoken message from the person who would never write in a guest book.
• —Original files. What the guest sent is what the couple downloads.
• —Pricing written down, in numbers, before you commit.
• —Works at a real reception: venue Wi-Fi, weak signal, a phone that comes back later — see "What if a guest has no signal?" below.

How the QR flow works

A guest scans the code with their phone camera and a page opens in their browser. There is nothing to install and no account to make. They take a photo, record a short film or leave a voice note, and send it. That is the whole flow.

On an iPhone in Safari, Gooya also offers an App Clip: a piece of the app that opens without an install. It is optional. On Android, and in any in-app browser, the same guest page opens in the browser.

What the App Clip adds

On an iPhone, a full page load in Safari offers an App Clip, and the App Clip carries two cameras the browser does not. The dual camera takes the front and the back in one shot, so the first dance and the face watching it arrive as one memory. The Reaction camera films a guest while they watch a memory back. Android guests use the same guest camera in the browser, and voice notes work from the same QR code on both.

The App Clip is a dial, not a button: Reaction (the dual camera), Faces (masks and glitter on the face), Reel, Video, Photo, Boom and Rewind, with eleven film looks from Soft Glow to Super 8. A guest picks one and shoots. Android guests and iPhones without a dual camera use the browser camera into the same album.

What Gooya holds, exactly

• —A free event admits up to 10 guests. A paid package lifts that cap off the event entirely.
• —A free event's album holds 50 photos, films and voice notes together, in one pool.
• —A paid event's album holds 800 photos and films, and the server refuses past that number rather than dropping anything quietly.
• —One photo can be up to 50 MB, one film up to 1.5 GB and 5 minutes, one voice note up to 25 MB.

How long the photos stay

The album stays open for a window after the event ends, and the window is the package: one week on a free event, 3 months on The Event, 1 year on The Keepsake. A Vault subscription keeps every album of yours open for as long as you hold it.

Past that window the album locks rather than empties. The files are kept; the host unlocks the album to open it again. Nothing is deleted at the end of a window.

The alternatives, named

Four things solve some version of this problem. Which one is right depends on the wedding, not on the marketing.

• —Disposable cameras. Each camera has a fixed number of frames, the film is developed after the day, and there is no video and no sound.
• —A shared iCloud or Google Photos album. No cost, and no setup at all if every guest is on the same platform and already signed in. Guests who are not sign in or make an account first, and everyone in the album can see what is in it.
• —POV is another QR guest camera; we have not used it, so read their own page rather than our summary.
• —Guestpix is another QR guest camera; we have not used it, so read their own page rather than our summary.

How to choose

• —If your guests span iPhone and Android and you do not want anyone installing anything, pick whatever opens in a plain browser.
• —If you want voice as well as pictures, check that voice is part of the same flow and not a second product.
• —Ask what the album holds and how long it is kept, in numbers. Both should be written down somewhere you can point at.
• —Ask who can see what guests send. An album everyone can browse and an album only the couple holds are different products.
• —If the wedding is over and you now just need to get the photos to people, you do not need an event at all — a private album shared with a link and a PIN does that.