A Woodside Wedding: Fauxtobooth Fun

From the time dinner ended, there wasn’t a moment all night long that our fauxtobooth wasn’t packed. So I’ll give my tip early in this post: if you’re considering renting a photobooth, or making a quick and easy fauxtobooth, just do it!

Ours was the quick and easy fauxtobooth version, which I detailed constructing here. Basically I just wanted to use stuff I already had, so I used three garment racks from my closet, and sewed a few snaps on sheets that were draped over the top for the sides and background. We used my sister’s Mac, which has a photobooth program on it, and webcam, and just instructed our guests to download their photos from our wedding website the next day (we also printed out one of their photos and included them in our thank you cards).

And I must say, the fact that our booth wasn’t fancy at all (in fact, the garment racks got bumped all night, messing up the sheet background repeatedly, and the lights I provided weren't quite set up right, giving a weird glare to the photos), or that we didn’t have the photos printed out on site, didn’t matter one bit to our guests. So if the logistics of a DIY photobooth are concerning you, don’t let it! Playing with the many props (that we got for cheap after Halloween last year) and getting to see the silly pictures they were taking on the 21 inch monitor we provided was plenty of entertainment for our guests. They couldn’t get enough of it, as evidenced by the couple hundred photos they took, and I’m so glad we decided to include this little project. Plus, getting to see all the hilarious photos the Sunday night after our wedding was just icing on the cake for us, since they were the first photos we saw from our wedding.

But enough gushing about how much fun everyone had in our fauxtobooth, let’s see some pictures!

First, some photos taken outside the fauxtobooth, by our photogs and guests--we all loved playing with the props!

(by Shoot Me Now Photography)

(by Shoot Me Now Photography)

(by Shoot Me Now Photography)

Now for some photo collages from the fauxtobooth!

(You can see our lovely DOC straightening the background sheets in the bottom right above photo, people were so eager to take their photo that they kept messing up the background!)

(Surprisingly a ton of the older people at our wedding loved the fauxtobooth action, including my dad! I think he has more pictures in the booth than anyone because he didn't want to move, haha!)

I made the above collages in Picasa, which has a lot of neat features to arrange large numbers of photos. I think doing a large collage like these below might be fun, printed out poster size to hang in our spare bedroom!

Are you planning to rent a photobooth, or build a DIY fauxtobooth for your wedding?

Miss any wedding week details? Catch up here:

- I packed an emergency bag that saved my dress
- We had a crazy 4 days prepping for house guests and stuffing favors
- Shopping for a ton of wedding flowers to arrange ourselves
- Mr. Cola drinks a 40 and I have a night out on the town for our low-key bach parties
- A day of DIY'ing flower arrangements
- I kicked off our official recaps with my #1 wedding tip
- We began the weekend festivities with a sunset cruise for our wedding party
- We rehearsed our quick and easy ceremony
- I panicked, but we got our rehearsal dinner decorations set up just in time
- Our families met for the first time at our rehearsal dinner under the trees
- What went wrong on our wedding day, and my tips for future brides
- My bridesmaids and I got our hair and makeup done in the hotel suite
- I put on my wedding dress and became a bride
- The guys watched the World Cup, then got ready in 10 minutes
- Traffic delayed our decorations getting to the venue, and I almost ruined our first look
- We got to see each other for the first time on our wedding day at our first look
- We took some time for bride and groom pictures in the park
- I gave you a behind the scenes look at our family, friends and DOC setting up our venue
- Arriving at our venue and getting ready for the ceremony to start
- Everyone walked down the aisle
- Excerpts from our ceremony, and reading the vows we wrote for each other
- I interrupted our officiant, we exchanged rings, and with a kiss we were officially married!
- Wedding party and family portraits, and my thoughts on missing pictures
- Our guests enjoyed cocktail hour while we took a few more photos
- Everyone ate a delicious dinner, and our siblings gave beautiful toasts
- We didn't practice, but we had a very special and wonderful first dance as husband and wife
- I showed you some disposable camera pictures, which were totally worth it to include on our tables!
- I found a target and tossed my bouquet at her
- Mr. Cola finally managed to find my garter under my dress and tossed it
- We fed each other cupcakes, and our guests swarmed our 6ft tall cupcake tower
- We stole some private moments together that our photographers documented

(Unless otherwise noted, the photos in this post are personal, taken by guests or in our fauxtobooth)

What Can You Get For Cheap During The After Holiday Sales?

Lots and lots of awesome photobooth props!

I really should have posted this back in early November, right after Halloween, but I just came across the box of props again last night. And I know there are a lot of newly engaged ladies out there who may have year long engagements, so keep this in mind: if you're having a photobooth and want props, hit up the party stores the day after Halloween for fantastic deals. I got a ton of props and everything was 50-90% off! (and I'm guessing you might have similar success in the after Valentine's Day and after St. Patrick's Day sales, especially if you're looking for props in pink, red or green)

And here is all of my loot, which I got for a whooping $36 on sale!


(beards, sparkly and feathered hats, clown wig, rainbow mohawk wig, 3 feather boas, feather mardis gras masks, glasses with noses attached, a tiara, king's crown)


(lots of leis, a coconut shell bikini top, clown noses, 4 mustaches*, and some pop up hats)

* The mustaches are the only thing not from the party stores, and not included in my $36 total. I got them from an Etsy seller for $5 each, since I didn't feel like spending the time to make them myself.

I hope our guests will take entertaining pictures like these with the props in our DIY photobooth.


{Source 1, Source 2, Source 3}

If you're having a photobooth, will you be gathering fun props for your guests to use? And do you have any other tips for the hive on where to find great deals?

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?