Today Ryan Learned That Hashtagging Your Wedding is a Thing

It's things like this that make me realize that I'm getting old.

When I mentioned this what-I-deemed-to-be-abnormal-tradition to my 28-year-old sister, she said, "Oh yeah, everybody does that now. You're just old." Oh. I see.

Just to be clear, I'm 37. That's not "old". To my 9 and 7-year-old it is, but in the grand scheme of life, it's not. 80 or 90 is "old." If anything, I thought it was a pretty unique, and overall great, idea. Here's a chance for everyone in attendance to get involved, and all the bride and groom need to do to see their day through their guests eyes is search the tag. If they choose to download the photos for a scrapbook (that's still a thing, right?) or their wedding album, then they can do that with a couple simple clicks. It's pretty genius, really.

It's also a far cry from what my wife and I did at our wedding 12 years ago, and just shows how quickly technology changes. When we got married in 2002, taking pictures on your phone was a thing, but the camera technology in those phones was nothing like it was today, and getting them off your phone was a pain. People still used digital cameras to take and share pictures, or believe it or not, cameras that took actual film you had to get developed to see the pictures. Needless to say, there was no hashtag at our wedding. Hell the word, "hashtag" wasn't even a word in 2002. There was no Facebook, or Twitter yet. We had AOL, and we liked it! (Now I'm starting to sound old.)

Instead we bought about 25 disposable cameras and sat one on each table, encouraging our guests to use them as the night went on. We then developed the pictures when we returned from our honeymoon. Where those pictures are now, I have no idea, but that's not the point. The point is that each generation has its own thing, and right now that "thing" is to hashtag their wedding. I suspect that when my kids get married, we'll all take pictures with the cameras surgically embedded in our eyes.

Viva technology!