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)

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?