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: October 2, 2026. Based on completed weddings in the Netherlands and Belgium with a wedding date from July through September 2026. We refresh this page every quarter; the dataset grows with every wedding season.

Summer 2026 in six numbers

How many photos do guests deliver?

• 200+ photos and videos per wedding on average (median 167, mean 215)
• More than 4 in 10 weddings pass 200, more than 1 in 5 pass 300
• The largest album filled entirely by guests: 1,160 photos and videos from 24 guests, almost 12 GB
• 93% photos, 7% video; the videos almost always include the keepers: the speeches and the first dance

The largest album of the summer holds 1,308 photos. There, the photographer also shared a selection through the same album afterwards, so every guest found the professional photos in one place. We do not count that album as the guest record.

More guests sharing, fuller album

The number of photos depends mostly on how many guests join in, not on how many photos one guest takes.

• At almost 4 in 10 weddings, 20 or more guests share; the busiest wedding had 63
• A QR code on every table and one mention out loud are worth it: every guest who joins adds about 10 photos or videos

And how much video?

• The median wedding collects almost 6 minutes of guest video; this summer's outlier reached 38 minutes
• At more than 9 in 10 weddings, at least one guest shares a video; at more than a third, the album holds over 10 minutes

Who does the photographing?

• On the median wedding, 17 guests become the couple's photo team for the day
• Every wedding has an unofficial photographer: in a sample of weddings from August, the most active guest delivered almost 3 in 10 photos, and the three most active guests together almost 6 in 10

The album comes alive before the wedding day

• At almost 6 in 10 weddings, the first upload lands before the wedding day, typically about ten days ahead: guests test the QR code and start sharing the build-up
• At almost 9 in 10 weddings, guests and the couple give each other hearts on the photos; the busiest album collected 160 of them

When is it shared?

• A first small wave around the ceremony (12:00 and 13:00), then building from 16:00 into the evening
• The busiest hour is 21:00; almost 7 in 10 wedding-day uploads land between 17:00 and 23:00

• The day after is as busy as the wedding day itself. Guests share their whole camera roll the next morning, often from the sofa
• In the median album, 95% of all uploads are in within 48 hours; almost 8 in 10 albums are fully complete within a week

When do couples marry?

• 87% of weddings in our albums take place on a Friday or Saturday; Saturday leads with half of all weddings
• Busiest day of the summer in our albums: Saturday, September 26
• Busiest week: the one of Friday, September 11 and Saturday, September 12
• We will publish a full-year seasonality curve once we have a full year of data; this page grows with the dataset

When do couples sort out the details?

• Most couples set up the album in the final weeks before the wedding
• Being late with the small things is normal, and not a problem: an album is ready in 5 minutes

Not just weddings

Alongside weddings, we also saw birthdays, wedding anniversaries, corporate parties and other events in the albums this summer. We keep those out of the wedding statistics above, but the pattern is the same. At such an event, typically 14 guests share more than 120 photos and videos, and Saturday is the favourite day there too.

What changed since the previous update?

The core numbers have stayed stable since September, now on a much broader base. Two figures dropped slightly: from 97% to 95% within 48 hours, and from more than 8 to almost 8 in 10 albums complete within a week. Older albums keep receiving late uploads in the weeks that follow.

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. The base is all completed weddings in the Netherlands and Belgium with a wedding date from July through September 2026. Albums that ended up unused are excluded, so the numbers reflect real weddings. A "guest" in these figures is a phone that shared: a couple using one phone together counts as one. The figures on the unofficial photographer come from a sample of weddings in August. Treat everything 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.