Photosharing site: FAIL!

Remember these?

I previously shared about the cute little cards that I had printed up for like only $15 through VistaPrint (250 of them) to let our guests know about our photo sharing site through http://www.weddingphotoswap.com/.  I was really excited about this.  Especially when I saw pictures and video of tons of our guests with cameras in their hands snapping away at our wedding. 

I left the cards with our valet service and asked them to pass them out to every guest (at least 2 per car) as they picked up their vehicles to leave at the end of the night.  That way they wouldn't get left behind.  I never did get back the box of any leftover cards and I can't imagine they gave away all 250 of them since we only had about 190 guests total. 

Well, over the next few days (while on our honeymoon), I would check the site to see if there were new photos put up.  Guess what?  Only like 3 or 4 people used it in that first week!  My cousin and friend (both bridesmaids), a girlfriend and our magician (a vendor!) were the only ones who posted photos of the wedding!  There were a few more posted on Facebook here and there but if your guests don't tag you in them it's hard to track them down. 

So photosharing site and little cute cards:  FAIL!

I can't quite figure out why it didn't work out.  Especially when I have read on other bride's blogs that they got upwards of hundreds to a thousand photos within the first weekend of their weddings!  So why did mine fail so horrifically?  We only have about 100 photos total on our site and it's been 2 1/2 months since the wedding!  I wonder if it's because we had an older crowd than most people?  Obviously the crazy youngin's in their early 20's love the digital age and uploading photos via Facebook, iphone, etc.  But I had 20 somethings there and I saw tons of guests (young and old) with cameras in their hands!

I've even had friends tell me "I need to get my pictures uploaded for you."  UGH!  So I know that there are a ton of photos of our day floating out there in the world in digital cameras that have probably not been hooked up to a computer in a while.  Who knows when these friends will get around to sharing them with us?  For now, I just have to pout and hope I am pleasantly surprised in the months to come.  I guess in some ways it will be fun to finally see them hit my e-mail or Facebook or maybe even that photosharing site (big waste of time) well after the wedding.  sigh 

Oh, and I did have a few friends say they never saw or received our little cards with the site information on them.  Dang it!  But just for fun, here are a few good photos we did get through the site:

Courtesy Debbie Pelichowski

Courtesy Reed Gillette

Courtesy Amber Marquez

Courtesy Kristin Jepson

Courtesy Kristin Jepson

Courtesy Debbie Pelichowski

So, what have your experiences been with these sites?  Are you going to use one for your wedding?  If you already did, how did it turn out?

TODAY'S WEDDING TIP:  Be sure that if you are going to try to get a message to your guests that you confirm you know it will get in their hands.  I had several guests say they never received the cards the valet was supposed to pass out and somehow I never got the extras back at the end of the night.  I created a little note that I tucked into our thank you cards to be sure to get out the word after the wedding but almost wish I would have just sent the cards *IN* the thank you cards now.

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So Mrs T over at Ninenty-Nine + Forever blog recently posted about this super cute photo sharing card idea.  I have been wanting to do something like this but put it on the back burner with everything else going on lately.  I had glanced at a couple of sites that offered this type of service but free was the key word and I wasn't too thrilled with some of the options I had found.

But Mrs T shared this site http://www.weddingphotoswap.com/ and it is free and lets you upload and download high resolution images into separate albums for all your wedding related events.  You just create a simple account using an e-mail and password and it provides a code for your guests to log in with.  I couldn't pass that up!

Plus I got a http://www.vistaprint.com/ catalogue in the mail two weeks ago that showed business cards on sale for like nothing!

I signed up for weddingphotoswap.com and then I quickly created a simple business card using Mrs T as my inpsiration and a template they had in a blue color.  I added in some red to make it wedding color related and listed all the info.  Since we're still a month and a half out from the wedding date, I picked their slowest shipping option and the total for 250 cards was only $15 including tax and shipping and the cost to upload our own photo! 

I got the cards like 2 weeks earlier than what their estimated arrival date was, too!  And here they are:

Sorry for the grainy image quality.  I scanned a card in at work instead of trying to take a photo with my crappy camera.  I love the little computer monitor on it since the whole idea is for them to share their pics with us via the web site (computer). 

Now I am trying to decide where to leave them for the guests?  I am thinking the best option is going to be to give them to the valet service and ask them to hand them to each guest as they pick up their car at the end of the night.  This way, they will not lose or forget them at the wedding.  The other option is to mail them with thank you cards but then we won't get pics back as fast and I think I am going with a postcard option for thank you's instead of an envelope option so that wouldn't work.

So fellow brides, did/are you using a photo sharing site for all your guests to share photos with?  If you did, how did you notify the guests of the info?