How to Deliver Wedding Photos to Clients

Wedding galleries run 10–50 GB of edited files — too large for email and too important to leave on an expiring link. The direct answer: use a dedicated client portal. Create a private space for each couple, upload at full resolution, and send them a single login link. Files stay available as long as the account is active, and you see exactly when they open and download the gallery. No countdown. No follow-up emails asking whether it arrived.

Why WeTransfer and Email Fall Short for Full Galleries

WeTransfer's free plan caps each transfer at 3 GB and gives you links that expire in roughly three days — a policy TechCrunch covered in August 2024 when the company adjusted how link extensions work. A delivered wedding gallery of 500–2,000 edited images typically runs 20–50 GB. That means splitting the delivery across multiple transfers, sending a batch of links at once, and a countdown clock running on every one from the moment you hit send. On a paid plan the expiry window extends, but the couple still receives a download link rather than a login — there is no shared space where the full gallery lives together under your name. For a broader look at large file transfer options, how to send large files to clients covers the full landscape.

Email has its own hard ceiling: most servers cap attachments at 25 MB, so high-resolution galleries never go out that way. Google Drive folders handle the size, but they require the couple to have a Google account, and the files sit inside Google's interface — not yours. Neither option gives you a record of when the couple actually opened the gallery for the first time.

What a Client Portal Changes for Wedding Photographers

A client portal gives each couple a private space under your studio name, with a login that goes straight to their gallery. A few things change immediately:

• Resumable uploads: Multi-gigabyte folders pick up where they left off if your connection drops. Upload a 40 GB gallery overnight without monitoring it.
• Links that never expire: The couple's login stays active until you deactivate their account. No 3-day countdown, no re-sending links.
• Audit trail: The log shows when they logged in and which files they downloaded. A clear record when 'we never received it' comes up.
• Your studio branding: Pro delivers the gallery under your studio name and logo, not a generic file-sharing page. Couples see your brand at every step.

A 5-Step Workflow for Year-End Wedding Deliveries

November and December are the peak delivery window for fall and year-end weddings. Setting up the portal in October means entering the season ready. Here is the workflow, step by step:

1. Start on the Free plan. No credit card required. Upload a sample folder to confirm the resumable upload works over your connection before the season starts.
2. Upgrade to Pro when you need client accounts. Pro gives you 25 active client accounts, 100 GB of storage, and 3 seats for second shooters or editors on your team.
3. Create the couple's account. Under Client Accounts, add their email. They receive a login link — nothing to install, no new account to create on their end.
4. Attach the gallery folder. The couple logs in and sees only their files — photos, videos, or any extras you include — under your studio name.
5. Check the download log. Once they have confirmed receipt and downloaded what they need, deactivate the account. That frees the slot for the next booking without losing any data on your end.

If this is your first season using a portal, the photo delivery guide covers the full general workflow for any type of client. For deliveries that mix stills and video, sending video files to clients walks through the same steps with heavier files and compressed previews.

Free vs. Pro: Which Plan Fits a Wedding Studio?

The Free plan works well for photographers who want to share their own files — a portfolio folder, a behind-the-scenes set, a preview delivery. It includes 2 GB of storage, files available for 30 days, and one private link per file. There are no client accounts, no per-couple spaces, and no studio branding on the portal page. See the plans page for a side-by-side comparison.

For wedding delivery — where each couple needs their own private space, you want the download log, and your logo should be on the page — Pro at $19 per month is the right fit. It covers 25 active client accounts, 100 GB of storage, and 3 seats for anyone else on the team. Once a couple has downloaded and confirmed, deactivate their account to keep the active count clear. For a cost comparison with WeTransfer Pro and similar tools, our WeTransfer alternative guide for photographers covers the pricing side in detail. More delivery workflows for photographers and agencies are in the For agencies & creatives section of the blog.

The software behind ProjectSend Cloud runs as open source on thousands of self-hosted servers. ProjectSend on GitHub has 4.8M+ Docker image downloads and a GPLv2 license — the same team maintains the hosted version and the open-source project. If you ever decide to move to your own server, your data exports with you. projectsend.org has the install guide and an active self-hosting community.