Wedding #Hashtag 101

Want to build buzz during your wedding planning and track all the amazing images posted by your social media savvy guests on the big day? The solution is your own wedding hashtag.

{Photo by Brett Tyler Studios}

Thanks to our friends at The Knot, read on for the top tips from wedding planner Jessi Haack and Sophie Pyle from social wedding concierge service Tweet the Bride for the scoop on how to create a successful hashtag…

Step 1.  Start with your names

Use your first, last and nicknames as your starting point. Remember that cutesy mashup name that your friends gave you guys in college that stuck for some reason? Well, this may be the time you actually want to embrace it. Haack says, “It makes it easier for the guests to remember, which means more people will actually use it!”

Step 2. Use numbers for a simple way to set your hashtag apart

If your names are common or you can’t come up with anything quirky, using the year or date of your wedding is an easy way to make it your own. “There might be a lot of #JackAndJill in the world, but you’ll probably be the only #JackAndJill121314!

Step 3. Get punny

This is one of those parts of your wedding that you can really have fun with, especially when it comes to word play. Look for alliterations, rhymes, synonyms and puns for a hashtag that’s both clever and memorable.

Step 4. Avoid easy misspellings

Read over your hashtag for any obvious ways it could be misspelled. For example you may want to shorten longer last names or move words around if there’s two letters in different words next to each other. It could be as simple as flipping #WandaAndDave to be #DaveAndWanda instead.

Step 5. Capitalize the first letter of each word

Capitalizing the first letter of each word can help with readability if guests can see where each word starts and ends. Doing this will also help ensure more guests will “get” your joke or pun. With or without the capitalization your hashtag will work the same either way.

Step 6. Check the hashtag

Before you hit print on your save-the-dates, do a quick check of the hashtag to see if there’s already been something tagged to it and if so how many photos. If there’s only a handful of other photos that don’t seem wedding related you should go ahead and use it, but if there’s an entire other wedding with the same exact hashtag you may want to switch a letter to a number or pick a different rhyme to avoid getting the photos mixed up. “Hijacking someone else’s hashtag is no bueno,” says Haack.

Step 7. Spread the word

After you’ve decided on a hashtag, it’s time to get the word out. Start early by telling your bridal party and putting it on your save-the-date. At the wedding you should also have reminders in case they forget. Pyle suggests using, “a cute sign that matches your decor and putting it on the menu is nice too.”

Step 8. Don’t overthink it

Will you remember your wedding hashtag forever? Eh, maybe. Will you love the photos everyone took forever? Definitely. So if it turns out that your couple nickname happens to be the word for a delicacy in another language and you start seeing food photos that aren’t on your catering menu, just roll with it. “Turn it into a light joke,” says Pyle. At the end of the day it’s the photos you’ll really care about having and that everyone had fun with it.

Happy hashtagging!