Who owns the wedding photos?
In Germany copyright always stays with the photographer — it cannot be transferred. What you receive are usage rights, and their scope is either in the contract or nowhere.
The distinction that matters
The author is whoever pressed the shutter, and stays so. That is not a formality but German law, and not negotiable. What is negotiable is what you may do with the pictures: show them privately, print them, publish them online, pass them to relatives — each of those is a separate point.
What should be in the contract
- Private use with no limit in time or territory — that is the normal case.
- Publication on social networks, explicitly allowed.
- Passing images to guests and family, also explicitly.
- Whether and where the photographer may show the pictures — and that you can withdraw that at any time.
- What happens to the files and how long they are kept.
If you do not want to appear online
Say so beforehand, not afterwards. A photographer lives on pictures they are allowed to show and will usually accept a restriction that is written into the contract — asking for it later is harder on everyone. The reverse also holds: nobody may advertise using recognisable people without their consent.