Short answer: make one album, send one link to the group chat, and every guest adds photos from their own phone. No guest has to create an account. Decide before the day whether photos appear as they arrive or stay sealed until a date you choose.
Why guest photos get lost
Every wedding produces the same pattern. Guests photograph all day, promise to send them, and then the photos stay in sixty camera rolls. The usual fixes each cost somebody something: a shared cloud folder asks guests to sign in, a dedicated app asks them to install and register, a printed QR code asks the couple to organise it, and an email chain compresses everything.
The common failure is friction. Each extra step — create an account, confirm an email, find the right folder — removes a share of guests, and the guests who drop out are often the least comfortable with apps.
One link is the album
In Halation an album is created on one phone and shared as a single link. It holds photos, videos and Live Photos alike. Whoever opens that link in the app joins the album; there is no sign-up, no password, and no group to configure. Paste it into the wedding chat the morning of and you are done.
Treat the link like a key. There is no guest list to check against, so anyone who holds the link is in. Send it to the people who were at the wedding, not to a public page.
Open, or sealed until a date
You choose one of two modes when you make the album.
| Mode | What guests see | Good for |
|---|---|---|
| Open | Photos appear as other members add them. | Trips, birthdays, a weekend with friends. |
| Sealed until a date | Nothing can be viewed by anybody until the date. Then it opens for everyone at once. | Weddings: the reveal becomes an event rather than a trickle. |
A sealed album is not hidden by a setting on a server. It is encrypted so that the key does not exist until the date — see how time-lock encryption works.
A set-up that works on the day
- Create the album the week before and test it with two phones, so that the first time anyone joins is not the wedding itself.
- Pick the mode. If you want the photos to be a surprise, choose a reveal date, then double-check the date and time.
- Send the link the morning of, in the chat where guests already are, with one sentence: "install Halation, tap this, add what you take."
- Ask guests to open the app once more afterwards. Photos travel between phones, and a phone has to be online to hand its photos on. See the next section.
The honest part: photos travel phone to phone
Halation has no server that stores your photographs. They move directly between the phones in the album, encrypted. That is why it is free and why nothing sits on a company's machines — and it has one consequence worth knowing in advance: a photo reaches other members when its phone and theirs are online around the same time. A guest who takes thirty pictures and never opens the app again leaves those pictures on their phone.
The practical rule is simple. After the event, ask everyone to open the app on Wi-Fi once or twice. The more phones that hold a photo, the safer it is; the app counts two copies as the line between "only on the phone that took it" and "safe".
Sources
Make the album before the wedding, not at it
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