Flickr is like a treasure chest of wedding resources and can be your best friend during these months of planning. Helpful from the start, Flickr is a great source of inspiration, as well as a wonderful location for sharing photos after the wedding.

photo via Big Day Plunge

Inspiration

Sometimes inspiration from bridal magazines can feel a little out of reach. The Wedding Details & Ideas group is one of my favorite spots on Flickr. Aren’t these dishes of strawberries and color-grouped M&Ms just great?

I have to admit the Wedding and Event Inspiration Boards group is a little bit of inspiration overload, but there are too many great ideas there to ignore. Images in inspiration boards are sometimes too small to see well, but most Flickr photos have a small “ALL SIZES” button above the image that will let you see all the details even bigger.

Be sure to use the group-specific search box at the top to find specific ideas. Upon a quick search of “retro” inspiration boards, I found this great yellow and aqua blue board. Every Flickr group has a message board. Feel free to take advantage of the advice from other Flickr-ing brides.

More Ideas

Love ranunculus flowers but not sure how to arrange them? Use Flickr’s main search box. Gotta love these sweet, little ranunculus boutonnieres that use twigs and feathers. Type in any sort of flower, object, color or style along with “wedding” to pull up all sorts of options.

Photography

As far as groups go, Wedding Photography is one of the biggest on Flickr. Search through it for photos you love and would like to recreate. Collect Flickr photos from this group to show your photographer examples of what you’re looking for. Hopefully your photographer is willing and will recreate them even more beautifully.

Sharing

Create a Flickr account for sharing ideas. It’s so easy; all you need is a Yahoo I.D. Perfect for sharing with long-distance bridesmaids and friends, you can use it to post dress and shoe ideas. Bridesmaids can use the comment feature to share their opinions as well.

Post-Wedding

Can’t get enough of your wedding photos? Ask guests to contribute their own photos — even videos! — via Flickr. The service says one couple recently collected more than 400 photos from guests in less than two weeks. You could get hundreds of photos to look through for hours of wonderful reminiscing.

It’s quite easy.

+ Form a group for your event (here’s the link if you’re already a user)

+ From the group, invite wedding attendees by e-mail

+ Post instructions on the group page telling users how to post (Flickr recommends saying the following):

How to upload a photo or video to this group:

1. Upload the photos or video to your own Flickr photostream. Flickr gives you lots of ways to do this: www.flickr.com/tools.
2. Go to the Organizr, click on the “Your Groups” tab up the top, which will open to show you a list of all your groups. Just drag and drop the things you want to share on to the group!

Enjoy all that Flickr has to offer you. Feel free to share your groups with us!