Wedding photos by the numbers

What really happens with photos at a wedding? Because guests share their photos through one QR code at Pixavo, we can see (aggregated and fully anonymized) what actually happens at real weddings. We share those numbers here, for anyone planning a wedding, writing about one, or researching the industry.

Last updated: September 2026. Based on 65 completed weddings (Netherlands and Belgium, July through early September 2026), together almost 13,500 shared photos and videos and over 110 GB of memories. We refresh this page every quarter; the numbers grow with every wedding season.

How many photos do guests deliver?

• 200+ photos and videos per wedding on average (median 162, mean 207)
• New record: 1,156 uploads at a single wedding, over 11 GB of images and video
• 93% photos, 7% video; the videos almost always include the keepers: the speeches and the first dance

And how much video?

• The median wedding collects 6 minutes of guest video; this summer's outlier topped half an hour
• Added up, couples collected more than 9 hours of wedding video through their guests this summer

Who does the photographing?

• On the median wedding, 15 guests become the couple's photo team for the day
• Each of them shares about 10 photos or videos; together they cover the day from getting ready to the last dance

The album comes alive before the wedding day

• At more than half of all weddings, the first upload lands before the wedding day, typically about a week ahead: guests test the QR code and start sharing the build-up
• And people don't just upload, they react: guests and couples gave almost 1,600 hearts on each other's photos this summer; the busiest album collected 158 of them

When is it shared?

• A first small wave around the ceremony (12:00 and 13:00), building through the afternoon
• The peak is in the evening: between 21:00 and 23:00; over three quarters of wedding-day uploads land between 17:00 and 23:00
• In the median album, 97% of all uploads are in within 48 hours; more than 8 in 10 albums are fully complete within a week

When do couples marry and plan?

• Almost 9 in 10 weddings in our albums take place on a Friday or Saturday, with Saturday leading
• Busiest moment of the summer in our albums: the last weekend of August, with Friday 28 August and Saturday 22 August as the busiest days
• Couples buy their album close to the date: the median couple sets it up 11 days before the wedding (average 12 days). Orientation happens earlier, usually 1 to 3 months out
• We will publish a full-year seasonality curve once we have a full year of data; this page grows with the dataset

Not just weddings

Since this summer, birthdays, wedding anniversaries and corporate parties have started showing up alongside weddings. We keep those out of the wedding statistics above, but the pattern is the same: one QR code, dozens of guests, hundreds of photos.

Methodology

All figures are aggregated across albums and fully anonymized: we never look inside individual albums and no photo was viewed for this analysis; we only count totals and timestamps. Albums that ended up unused are excluded, so the numbers reflect real weddings. Medians and averages are computed over completed weddings. Treat this as a snapshot of the 2026 season; the dataset grows every quarter.

Citing is welcome. The numbers are free to use under the CC BY 4.0 licence: use "Source: Pixavo, wedding photos by the numbers" with a link to this page. Questions about the data: support@pixavo.io.

Read more: the most popular wedding day or see how collecting guest photos works.