Si­mone Sant-Ghu­ran

Did you know that the av­er­age wed­ding guest shares 22 pho­tos on so­cial me­dia from your wed­ding? (Source: The To­day Show, May 2013). De­pend­ing on the type of cou­ple, that sta­tis­tic could ether be op­ti­mistic or ter­ri­fy­ing.Mod­ern day wed­dings have many more is­sues to grap­ple with than, say, wed­dings from even ten years ago. Now there are on­line RSVP man­age­ment tools and a pletho­ra of so­cial me­dia chan­nels for cou­ples to con­tend with!Nat­u­ral­ly, the new forms of com­mu­ni­ca­tion war­rant cer­tain eti­quette rules. There are now new do's and don'ts when nav­i­gat­ing so­cial me­dia and for us­ing tech­nol­o­gy at wed­dings.

Here are some do's:

�2 Do take a cue from the cou­ple. If the cou­ple seems very tech-savvy and open about shar­ing de­tails about their wed­ding on­line, chances are they may be open to hav­ing pho­tos of their wed­ding post­ed via so­cial me­dia. How­ev­er, nev­er take this for grant­ed and al­ways ask per­mis­sion first. This is be­cause many cou­ples would like to be the first to post their pho­tos or make cer­tain an­nounce­ments; and as guests, we should re­spect that.

�2 Do make re­spect­ful com­ments. Com­ments to pho­tos or sta­tus posts should be com­pli­men­ta­ry. It's poor form to make hurt­ful re­marks or veiled in­sults about a hap­py cou­ple's wed­ding pho­tos!

�2 Use the wed­ding hash­tag. Some cou­ples who are very open to so­cial me­dia will set up a wed­ding hash­tag for use on Twit­ter or Face­book. In this in­stance, they will pro­vide it through a note card, word of mouth, pri­vate email or on their per­son­al wed­ding web­site. You can share pho­tos or well wish­es us­ing the hash­tag. Af­ter the wed­ding, it will be easy for the cou­ple to col­late pho­tos or com­ments, by sim­ply search­ing for posts with their hash­tag.

Here are some don'ts:

�2 Be­fore the wed­ding: It's best not to post pho­tos of the in­vi­ta­tion and its de­tails. This is to safe­guard the pri­va­cy of the cou­ple, since chances are they have not in­vit­ed every­one on their friends' list and would prob­a­bly like to keep the in­vi­ta­tion de­tails dis­creet, un­til the wed­ding.

�2 You're not the hired pho­tog­ra­ph­er! Try­ing to cap­ture every wed­ding de­tail with your smart phone or worse, bulky ipad or tablet will end up in­fu­ri­at­ing guests whose view you might block in your at­tempts. Re­mem­ber that the cou­ple has hired a pro­fes­sion­al pho­tog­ra­ph­er to get ex­act­ly what they need and there's no rea­son for guests to be jostling with pho­tog­ra­phers for an­gles or space!

�2 Stay clear of so­cial me­dia at the wed­ding. It's im­por­tant to be "in the mo­ment" at a wed­ding. This is why it's poor man­ners to be con­stant­ly on your smart phone, up­dat­ing and post­ing pho­tos dur­ing the wed­ding cer­e­mo­ny or re­cep­tion.

�2 "Jour­nal­ism" at its worst. One ex­am­ple of this is a guest who gives a run­ning com­men­tary on so­cial me­dia about every minute that pass­es at the wed­ding. It goes with­out say­ing that this isn't nec­es­sary or even cour­te­ous to the cou­ple.

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