Wedding industry: galleries portal with Shopify sync and AWS

Situation

The product was not a retrofit of an off-the-shelf gallery: we designed and built the application from the ground up for the wedding industry, so couples and vendors could capture, organise, and relive memories in one coherent portal. That meant owning everything from how uploads and conversions behave under load to how guests experience a live slideshow, alongside clear user and guest management and a stack that could scale on AWS and talk to Shopify and other tools.

What we focused on

• End-to-end product: UX and UI from first principles, information architecture, and a PHP and MariaDB core shaped around real gallery and occasion workflows.
• Media pipeline: Robust file handling, image and video conversion pipelines, and queuing so heavy work did not block the UI or overwhelm the database.
• Engagement: Messaging for notifications and comms in context, plus live slideshows that felt reliable under event-night conditions.
• People and access: User and guest management, permissions, and invitations so owners, collaborators, and guests each saw the right surface without admin overhead.
• Shopify and ecosystem: Integrations with Shopify and other third-party apps, including a custom Shopify app to sync purchases and keep entitlement aligned with the portal.
• AWS operations: Deployment on AWS with load balancing (ELB), auto scaling (ASG), a bastion for safe access, Lambda where serverless fit, S3 for media, RDS for MariaDB, and supporting infrastructure sized for resilience and observability.

Outcome

A purpose-built platform rather than a patched theme: predictable media behaviour, slideshows and messaging that matched how people actually celebrate, and commerce and infrastructure the team could run with confidence.