This post contains affiliate links.
Are you on Snapchat? The social media platform that was once exclusively popular among teens is now growing exponentially with young adults. I’ve had a Snapchat account for a while but I just started actively using it a few months ago and I’m hooked. I love how easy it is to send “snaps” (pictures, videos, and messages) to my friends and I admit I’m addicted to the face filters.
One fun feature with Snapchat is the ability to add a Geofilter to your snaps. A Geofilter is an image overlay that only appears at a certain GPS location/area. For example, when you’re at Disneyland you can chose from several Geofilters that are not available outside of Disneyland.
Recently Snapchat opened up the ability for anyone to design, create, and upload their own Geofilter, and it’s surprisingly affordable (starting at around $5). I’m starting to see them pop up for small businesses and events – and also at weddings! Yes, the latest wedding trend is to create a custom Snapchat Geofilter for your wedding. When your guests are sharing snaps of your wedding, they can swipe and add your personalized Geofilter to their image or video. Pretty neat, right?
So how do you create a Snapchat Geofilter for Your Wedding?
The first step is to create your design. Snapchat gives you very clear guidelines regarding what images they will approve. This includes:
- No trademarked images.
- No website URLs, phone numbers, or “@” names.
- Background must be transparent.
- Image should cover only a small percentage of the screen.
- No actual pictures of people.
If you need some help creating a design, there are plenty of shops online to have one made!
Etsy shop DesignsByJFK has cute Snapchat Geofilters with Disney elements!
Pink House Press offers custom Geofilters for weddings, bachelor/bachelorette parties, and other big events.
xoBespoke not only offers several different templates to choose from, but all their templates match up with other printable products in their shop!
If you want to do something a bit more custom, Our Wedding Brand will design a Geofilter for $125. Geotag Filters also offers varying levels of custom designs, between $25 for basic text and $125 for a more custom design.
Once you have your design, you have to submit it to Snapchat. There are a lot of tutorials out there on how to do this, so I won’t rehash it here. Check out this guide (and user experience) on Hootsuite, and this extensive tutorial from Gary Vaynerchuk. But here is just a quick rundown of what to expect.
1. Upload your design.
2. Choose your time frame. You pay by the hour, so most couples choose to have the filter available during their wedding hours only. However, if you have some additional budget to spend, you could have it be available your entire wedding weekend. Keep time zones in mind. Snapchat’s default is Eastern time so you may need to do some math if your wedding is in California.
3. Set the geographic area. This will be the location of your wedding. You can type in the address on their map, then use the tool to drawn a “fence” around the area you desire. Right now you can only target the US, Canada, and United Kingdom.
4. On the final screen, Snapchat will estimate your costs so you can go back and edit if necessary. You enter your payment info at this time, but you’ll only be charged if the filter is approved.
This is a very simplified version of how to upload a custom Snapchat Geofilter, so if you are actually going through the process, I highly recommend carefully reading one of the tutorials I linked to above.
That’s it! It’s such a cool feature; as a fan of weddings and Snapchat, I hope I get the chance to use a custom Snapchat Geofilter at a wedding soon!
Do you plan on making a custom Snapchat Geofilter for your wedding? Let me know if you do! I’d love to hear from someone who has gone through the process and how your guests reacted.
