Even though you're spending thousands of dollars on professional photography for your wedding, you're still going to want those photos taken by friends and family of you leaving the church, piling the bridal party into the limo, and of course the shots of your guests drunkenly dancing at the reception.
But collecting all those pictures isn't easy, especially from older guests who don't use Instagram or other photo sharing apps. So to create a way for all your guests to share their captured moments with you, a Chicago startup has launched a service that curates all your guests' photos via text messaging.
Memms launched in beta in October and allows people at an event to text their pictures and videos to a specific phone number, which are then visible on a unique Memms URL. As long as your wedding guests know the number, all they have to do is text their photos and the bride and groom have a chronological feed of images from their wedding day. There are no third party apps, no hashtags, and no explaining to your elderly relatives how it works.
"It works with you cousin's iPhone 6 and your grandma's LG flip phone," said Justin McNally, founder of Memms. "If you know how to text, you know how to use Memms."
Memms, named by combining "memories" and "MMS" (multimedia messaging), currently offers a free and premium product. The free version lets you create one event per month, and you're given a phone number for guests to use, a URL for archiving photos, and a 100 picture limit on images.
McNally said more groups opt for the paid model, which is currently $9/month and allows for unlimited photos, video sharing, the ability to personalize your phone number and URL, and it even turns your wedding videos into gifs.
In both the free and paid versions, photos are uploaded in real-time, and the web page is public so all your guests can see pictures from your big day. And since pictures are available immediately, out-of-town family and others who couldn't make the wedding can follow along and see images from the event as they're taking place.
The purpose of Memms isn't to replace a wedding photographer, McNally says, but rather to compliment your professional photos with pictures your guests would want you to see anyway. Memms has had a few hundred users since its launch, but McNally expects that number to rise now that the product has officially launched out of beta. Currently Memms is focusing on weddings, but the app could work with many different events, he said.
"We created this as an application for weddings, but other industries have reached out to us," McNally said. "Right now we are really laser-focused on one vertical. I think in a year, you'll see us at events like SXSW, Lollapaoloza, and other large festivals."
There are several companies out there competing to be the go-to wedding photo sharing app, but no one is using text messaging to curate pictures, McNally said. You can sign up for the service here.
Image courtesy of Memms
