I know the cool thing to do right now is to act like you hate going to weddings. And maybe… some people do? But personally, I don’t buy it. There’s booze and cake and I get to wear a cute outfit and dance my ass off, and on top of all that, I also get to see two people I care a lot about make a super huge commitment to each other, and it’s totally acceptable for me to cry in public. The thing is, unless you’re one of the VIP guests at a wedding (aka wedding party or immediate family), you don’t always get a lot of time to talk to the couple and tell them how happy you are for them, especially if the guest list is huge. (When one of my closest friends got married last year, I spent about six months trying to figure out what kind of toast I would give her, even though I, um, wasn’t exactly invited to give her a toast. Whoops.) Which was why I was really excited when I first heard about SpeechBooth, a brand new company that provides DIY video booths, allowing your guests to give you all the unofficial speeches they want, and then edits them into a video for you to watch when the festivities are over.
Think of SpeechBooth like a photobooth with sound. It’s a halfway point between full-on DIYing your wedding video (minus having to secure equipment and do any of the editing) and hiring a videographer to follow you around all day. Plus instead of having a videographer awkwardly asking your guests to say things to the camera during dinner, your guests can do it of their own volition after they’ve had a few beers. Win. Basically, for less than the cost it would take to rent equipment and buy video editing software, you get both without having to actually do any of the work. Here’s how SpeechBooth works:
- Order It: Reserve your SpeechBooth kit for just $499 (plus a refundable $125 deposit that you get back when everything is returned safe and sound). SpeechBooth will schedule your kit to arrive the week of your wedding. The kit itself includes an iPad mounted to a tripod, a video light, and a microphone, plus custom software that makes recording a speech super easy and straight-forward (your guests can even test record their submission and then review and approve the final version).
- Receive It: Calling SpeechBooth a video photobooth is kind of a misnomer, because the setup itself is ultra portable. Everything fits on a tripod, so you can set up your SpeechBooth outside, or in a corner of your venue; wherever it will fit. There’s no need to deal with complicated technology or a bulky booth contraption; everything is delivered in a lightweight, easy-to-carry box that takes less than five minutes to set up. Plus, since the SpeechBooth people know what’s up, you can rest assured that the video you end up with is actually… usable, thanks to the video light and microphone they include with their setup (because the arch nemesis of DIY videography is a dark, noisy room).
- Enjoy It: Throughout your wedding, guests can record video messages at their leisure with SpeechBooth’s easy to use touchscreen app. And since you don’t need an attendant to work SpeechBooth, you don’t have to worry about some stranger prompting them to talk about their favorite memory with you (because that’s what champagne is for).
- Watch It: When the wedding is over, simply ship the kit back using the supplied return shipping label. Within a week, your professionally edited compilation video (kind of like the one below) will be uploaded to a secure online account for you to download, enjoy, and share. Let’s call that the perfect honeymoon present. Plus you get all the raw HD footage of your toasts, unedited, to bust out some rainy day when you need a reminder of how amazing your wedding was and how much your people love you.
While you and your partner ultimately get something awesome out of using SpeechBooth (hello drunken well wishes from friends and family to look back on in ten years), SpeechBooth was actually created with guests in mind. Says co-founder and CEO Dan Slagen:
They say everyone has a year of attending weddings. Mine was last year, when I was a guest at ten weddings in twelve months. I noticed that the one commonality across all of these weddings was that there was no easy way to capture the energy in the room and the well-wishes guests wanted to share with the couple.
Whether you’re having a huge wedding or a teeny tiny one, the best part is always the people who make it up. With SpeechBooth, you can easily capture the energy of all your guests in a way that’s fun for them, won’t interrupt dinner, and costs less than most DIY equipment. We had over two hundred people at our wedding. I think I got to spend a hot second talking to everyone there before it was time to go home. If I could get a $500 time capsule of all those people we love, saying sweet and funny things and generally being their awesome selves? I would snatch that up in a heartbeat.
SpeechBooth’s portable video booth is just $500, including the finished video. Click here to rent your SpeechBooth today!
