Review mode is a quiet gate between your guests' phones and the public gallery. When it is on, every upload goes into a pending queue that only you see. You approve or reject each one. Guests never know the difference, they see the same "uploaded successfully" confirmation either way.
This is the most under-used Capture Club feature. If you are worried about anything showing up in the gallery that should not, turn it on and stop worrying.
How to turn it on
From your event page:
- Click Settings in the toolbar
- Click Review mode OFF to toggle it on
- A "Review" tab appears next to Gallery showing pending uploads
Toggle it off again the same way. The setting is per-event, so one gallery can be reviewed while another is not.
What guests see when it is on
Exactly what they see when it is off. The upload form works the same way, the success toast is the same, and the "thanks, your photos are uploading" page looks identical. From a guest's perspective, their photo is in the gallery.
They cannot tell that their upload is pending. That is intentional, if guests know there is a review queue, some will re-upload, message the host, or get awkward about it at the wedding.
What you see when it is on
A new Review tab appears on your event page with a count badge showing pending uploads. Inside, each pending upload is a card with:
- The photo or video thumbnail
- The guest's name if they entered one
- The upload time
- An Approve button and a Reject button
Approve moves the upload into the public gallery. Reject deletes it. There is no "save for later", the queue is binary.
When to turn it on
Real cases from photographers using this:
- Kid-heavy weddings. Kids grab phones. You end up approving 40 photos of the floor, but you catch the one where a toddler took a photo up Aunt Linda's skirt.
- Rowdy wedding parties. Bachelor-party humor tends to surface during the reception. Review mode keeps it in the text chain, not the couple's keepsake gallery.
- Clients who want approval control. Some brides want to approve everything before it goes live. Give them your login, or screen-share while you batch through the queue during cocktail hour.
- Corporate events. Any client whose compliance team gets nervous. "All submissions are moderated before display" is a line you can put in the contract.
- During the ceremony, specifically. Guests sometimes upload blurry or back-of-head shots during the vows. Review mode during the ceremony window catches the "accidentally hit upload on a black frame" problem.
When to leave it off
- Live-feed receptions. Part of the magic of the Viewing Room slideshow is that photos appear in near-real-time. Review mode breaks that magic.
- Small, adult-only weddings. If you know every guest and the couple is chill, you are adding work for no reason.
- High-volume events. If 300 guests are each uploading 20 photos, you are approving 6,000 uploads. That is not a good use of your evening.
The hybrid strategy (recommended)
Most photographers who use review mode do this:
- Off during cocktail hour and dinner. Let guests see each other's uploads in real time, keep the vibe.
- On during the ceremony. Only 20-30 uploads typically, and you are going to batch-approve them at a break anyway.
- On overnight after the reception ends. Catches the late-night drunk uploads before the couple wakes up and opens the gallery.
- Off again in the morning. Back to normal for any guests uploading late (people do, surprisingly often).
You can toggle freely, there is no cost or limit.
What happens to pending uploads if you turn review mode off?
They stay pending. The queue does not auto-clear when you flip the toggle. You either approve or reject them manually from the Review tab, or toggle review mode back on and process them normally.
Bulk approve
The review queue shows one upload per card. We do not have a "approve all" button because that defeats the point, if you are going to approve everything, turn review mode off. If you want to approve most but reject a few, go card by card. Most hosts move through ~3 uploads per second once they get a rhythm.
Rejected uploads are gone
Reject is permanent. The upload is deleted from storage. If you reject something by accident, the guest has to re-upload.
Can guests see that their upload is pending?
No. There is no "pending" badge shown to guests. Their upload succeeds from their side either way. If you reject it, they never know, the photo just is not in the gallery.
A small ethical note: some hosts feel weird about this. You can tell guests at the event that submissions are moderated if it makes you more comfortable. We do not display it by default because most guests would not notice or care, and the ones who would often take it personally.