You’ll want to save your wedding videos somewhere safe. There are countless stories of couples reaching out to their wedding videographer years down the road because they lost the hard drive where they stored their videos.
Where to Save Your Wedding Videos
Quick Answer: The best place to save your wedding videos is by uploading them to YouTube and multiple external thumb drives.
1. YouTube – The Best Place to Save Wedding Videos
Anything’s possible, but it doesn’t look like YouTube is going anywhere. It’s a free, popular, and easy-to-use video service, perfect for uploading your wedding videos.
NOTE: YouTube is my #1 recommendation, and I think you should immediately upload your wedding videos. Do not wait. Just get those wedding videos uploaded ASAP!
You can easily upload and choose whether your videos are public, unlisted, or private.
- Public – Available to everyone on YouTube. Perfect if you want the world to see your wedding.
- Unlisted – Available to everyone with the link, but the videos aren’t searchable. Perfect if you want the links to spread through your circle of friends and family.
- Private – Only available to those you invite to view the link. Perfect if you want the most privacy and control.
Tip: Upload to both your and your spouse’s YouTube accounts. Redundancy is key.
One additional bonus of storing your wedding videos on YouTube is that it’s easy to watch the videos on smart TVs.
2. External Thumb Drives and Hard Drives
External storage is where a lot of couples save their wedding videos. This is a great option and one I’d recommend. However, hard drives can fail, and small thumb drives are easy to lose.
The reason YouTube is the first place you should upload your video is because it’s so easy to lose these devices over the years.
These little flash drives are easy to lose, so buy a few. You can gift one to your parents, having one more place they’re saved.
3. Google Drive
Google Drive is an easy place to store videos, but there are two disadvantages: 1. There are storage limits, so it only works well if you don’t use Google Drive for other things. 2. Google Drive and YouTube are both owned by Google, so you’re using the same provider.
4. Dropbox
I love Dropbox and use it every day. However, the free version is too small to save your wedding videos. If you have a paid account, it’s a great place for storage, but it’s not as dependable in the long term as YouTube and flash drives.
What Not to Do
- Don’t rely on your wedding videographer to keep copies of your wedding videos. Personally, I keep all files as long as possible, but not forever.
- Don’t rely on one storage place. Redundancy is key. External storage devices are easy to lose and get corrupted, so make sure you upload to YouTube.
Conclusion
There are more storage options out there, but sticking with uploading your wedding videos to YouTube and storing on multiple flash drives is a great plan.
The more places you store your videos, the better. 🙂
