You’ve just received your image gallery from your wedding day. You’re in love with all your photos. Everything feels exactly as you remember it–and there are even some moments captured you don’t remember happening. Your heart is so full it could burst from joy and excitement.

So, now what?

three reasons why you should print your photos

1. hold your photos in your hands

Your wedding day was an experience you lived with all of its stressors and every dream come true. You were present. You felt intense nervousness and relief. It was a whole day of moment after moment lived fully surrounded by people you love and who love you. And while it’s fun to see your photos for the first time as you scroll through your online gallery, your photos come to life when they are in your hands.

When you can pick up a moment in time and hold it in your hands, it carries a different weight. It’s a moment, a memory that you can feel. You can frame them on your walls and shelves and share it with new and old guests in your home. You can flip through the pages of an album with your children and tell them about your wedding day, in great detail. You can pull the print out of the storage box when a loved one passes, and you need an image for their funeral.

What I want most for you is to have a tangible reminder of what happened on your wedding day: who was there, how did you feel, what was it like? Get them off your phone. Get them off the USB drive. Get them into your hands.

2. gift prints + albums to loved ones

Wedding photos will always make great gifts–especially for those first holidays after your wedding. A parent album for Christmas or framed family photo for Mother’s / Father’s Day will always be a well loved gift. You can also tuck photos into cards and notes to family and friends, sharing about your life as well as an image of them tearing it up on the dance floor or tearing up as you walked down the aisle.

As much as your wedding day was filled with memories for you, all of your family, friends, and other precious guests made memories that day, too. Share the gift of printed photos with the people who championed you on your wedding day. Portraits or candids, the thoughtful touch of seeing a photo and sharing it with them will remind them of the love and joy they felt that day.

3. preserve your legacy of life and love

I clung to the very few photos I have of my great grandparents who passed when I was a teen. I was desperate to remember the way they laughed when they teased us, the way her hair was always put together in the same style she’d had for ages, the way the rocking chair sagged from years of use. I wish I had more photos of them.

When I photograph your wedding, I’m surveying the room constantly for moments that tell us who matters and why. Your legacy began long before you and your partner met. And, your legacy will continue long after you join the dust of the earth. The moments I capture on your wedding day will help preserve the legacy of the parents, grandparents, and great grands who came before you, so that the legacy you leave in children, grandchildren, and great grands will always be memorable.

Your life is extraordinary. Your love is magical. Your story is worthy of being remembered. A wedding day is just a chapter in the book you’re writing together, but it’s an important one.

Don’t let your legacy live solely in the digital world.

Print your dang photos. Slowly or all at once. Just print them.