I'm Doing Cartwheels and Backflips!

I just had such a great weekend, as far as wedding-things are considered!

First of all, I had 6 appointments scheduled for dress shopping yesterday, and I bought my dress! My little sister/MOH came to town for the weekend and we went shopping with our mom. I'm going to post more soon about the dress, after I scope the web for more pictures of it and PhotoShop the pictures of me in it to show it closer to the color I ordered it in. I can't wait to share my dress, it's just so perfect, and I'm so freakin' happy about crossing this thing off the list!

Secondly, I think we might have figured out a way to DIY our photobooth! I had already considered, and rejected, the idea of a DIY booth, even before I looked at the pricing for renting one in our area. Unfortunately our nice camera we just bought six months ago doesn't have the remote shutter control as a feature, and I didn't want to have to ask someone to run my camera the whole night on a tripod. But while my sister was here I realized that she has a MacBook Pro, which awesomely has a program called Photo Booth on it! {Source}

I've heard of several other people using this program on their Mac for a DIY photobooth, including Mrs. Bunny recently on WeddingBee. But I think we're going to take it a step further.

To protect my sister's laptop from spilled drinks and such, as well as to make the set up a little less "sit at a computer and click the camera icon with the mouse", we're going to put the laptop under a table, and set up a large LCD monitor with a good quality webcam on top of the table, and utilize this fantastic invention: a button that you can program to act as any key command in any program! This will act as the "start" button that people can press to start the '3-2-1-snap' countdown on the Mac Photo Booth program.
{Source}

Combine all this with some fabric hanging from one of my garment racks, a bench, and some props, we'll have a DIY photobooth for cheap! I actually just ordered the USB Button (and I Googled "Griffin Technology Promo Code" and found a code for 20% off my order, and shipping was free too), so we'll have it for when my sister comes back for Thanksgiving and can test it out. I'll be sure to post pics from the trial, since we'll need to figure out how far away the monitor and webcam can be for the best photos, and that will dictate a lot of the rest of the set up.

I'll also have to make a sign to explain how to use the DIY photo booth (I sort of like this concept, but "Smile. Press. Repeat.", or something like that with cute graphics). Additionally, I'll need to make a page on our website for guests to download the pictures after the wedding (we have 50gb of storage on the site, so it shouldn't be a problem, and all the people who'll be interested in the photobooth are web-savvy).

Yay! I'm so excited we'll get to have cute pictures of us and our guests like these:

{Source 1, Source 2, Source 3, Source 4}

So all in all, an awesome weekend! I found my dress, I have a plan for a budget-friendly photobooth option, and best of all, I got to hang out with my sis. She lives in the Portland area, so we don't get to talk in person very often, but we had a blast chatting until 5am last night, telling funny stories, discussing wedding things, and just being girls. I was so exhausted after the long day of dress shopping, I'm not sure how I stayed awake that late but it was a perfect end to a perfect day!

Have you had a stand out weekend where things just seemed to come together, and you were able to cross some big ticket items off your list? And what do you think of our new DIY photobooth plans?

Wishing, And Hoping, And Dreaming....

During the wedding planning process you are bombarded with an overload of visual stimuli. Hundreds of inspiration boards, ideas, and recap photos are out there just waiting for you to feast your eyes on. Some call the many, many beautiful pictures "wedding porn," and that's a pretty good term for it! I could (and have, and do!) spend hours looking at all the many ideas out there for inspiration, but I'm beginning to think I may need to stop.

I keep finding new things to add to our wedding plans! There are a lot of them that I think are really cute, but either are too expensive, too hard to do, or something that I really appreciate, but can live without. And then there are a few, two things in particular, that I can't stop thinking about.

#1 is the Photobooth.

{Source for both}

I've seen this featured in so many weddings that I've seen online, since it's the latest "trend." And although I don't like to jump on the bandwagon, I have a feeling that unless somebody attends like 5+ weddings a year, chances are they've never seen one at a wedding. Everyone looks so happy and seems to be having so much fun in all the photobooth wedding pics I've seen. And I know Mr. Cola and I had fun at the one wedding we've been to that had a photobooth. I think it would be a huge hit with all our friends, and we could even get some fun props during after Halloween sales for some silly photo opps.

The problem though is the cost. Do we really have a spare $1000 to spend on this? That's where I'm torn. It's a pretty big chunk of cash for a few hours of entertainment...but then again we would have a million awesome pictures from it (the guests all get a print out there, and you get to keep a CD of everything at the end of the night). Plus you have the option of having a projector showing what's going on in the booth displayed on a wall for everyone to see, which makes it even more fun and enticing. Sigh, what's a girl to do?

My #2 obsession is an ice cream/gelato cart.


{Source 1, Source 2}

Wouldn't that be a neat addition to the cupcakes for dessert, to have a scoop of yummy gelato? The cart could be set up in the inside dining room near the photobooth and people could get their photos taken and then eat some gelato afterward. For $400 we can get 120 2-scoop servings, cups, spoons, napkins, 2 hrs with 1 person serving, with tax and 14% gratuity charge included in the price. But my main fear is that it would take away from the specialness of our cupcakes and awesome 6 foot cupcake stand (more on that later). But on the other hand, it could be a really cool addition too, since we're not having the traditional cake for dessert.

Having both of these add-ons would be so awesome. But are they worth the price, I'm not sure. I think if I had to choose one, it would be the photobooth, however that's over twice the cost of the gelato cart. But I think the pay-off would be better and people would enjoy it more than the extra dessert....although both would be the best!

I'm going to have to think (and drool!) over these ideas a bit more before I make any decisions. If there's anywhere I can find in the budget to include one or both of these, it would be either in savings on my dress (if I get the pretty cheap one I found online from a distributor instead of one I might find in a boutique), or maybe we could skip the $260 snorkel trip on our honeymoon, or heck, if I'm really looking for/grasping at straws for justification on these added costs, I suppose I could go without any new shoes or clothes for myself this coming fall/winter/spring....

Have you found any non-budgeted for, but super awesome additions you want for your wedding? And which would you pick if you were me, the photobooth, the gelato cart, both, or neither?