Sienna’s Idea Pulse - Photo Booth Anyone?

       Good Afternoon everyone! Well here we are with our first blog post! Remember what I said about wanting to share ideas with you? Well here is an idea I must share. There are so many ways you can make your wedding unique. Photos are an amazing way to capture fantastic moments at your wedding that you can refer back to down the married road. Photo booths are one of the most fun ways to do this! When people spend a large amount of time and money on an event, they want to remember it. When you look back at photos from the past which ones bring back more memories? Is it the pictures where a photographer was posing you all so that it looked the best and the light hit just right, or was it the candid photos where you and your friends were doing what you wanted to do and acting how you wanted to act?  

I know when I look at the photos from my past it is the pictures where I am making a silly face with a friend or where I was not completely focused on the camera that really helps me relive those great memories.  Guests have a blast getting inside the booth, sliding the curtain closed and letting their personalities run wild! However, the ultimate additions to photo booths are props.

The Props

Now, I don’t know how familiar you are with Etsy.com but if you don’t know what it is, I’d like to introduce you. It is an amazing website where phenomenal everyday people with talents of their own can create their own online store and sell their homemade goods! It is one of the most creative websites I have ever seen. Please see for yourself! As far as the Photo props go…take a look at a few fun things I found on www.Etsy.com.

Maro Designs

HeathOriginal

                                                                      Little Retreats

 

                                                                          

Now on to the booths…the photo booth is becoming quite popular at wedding receptions and if you’ve ever experienced it you’d know why! It is an incredible way to make fun memories that your guests can take home with them. Like your wedding album photo booths definitely create life long memories.  There is nothing like a little sibling rivalry to see who can make the goofiest strip or seeing the charm of 12 old friends trying to fit in a small booth.  Compare your photos; you might even want your DJ to announce a contest for the funniest photo. As you can see below there are many ways to enhance your photo booth fun!

The Ideas

1.) Make It Interactive – Get your guest’s to break out of their shell using hats, masks, mustaches, boas…etc. Encourage them to grab something that brings out their personality!

2.) Location: High Traffic – Make sure that your Photo Booth is stationed in a high traffic area, a place where your guests will certainly pass by and just can’t resist stopping for a photo session. It is important to know what those areas are at your venue. Here at the Lodge we have taken care of that for you. The best Forest House high traffic areas are near the bar in the main lobby, or in the lounge by the dance floor. These locations are convenient for setup as well as for the best traffic flow opportunities.

3.) Two Types: The Booth vs. the Backdrop – In order to choose which type suits you best consider the following; Do you want a large space to work with, which involves the ability to take pictures with more people at a time and the ability to use large or many props? If so, the backdrop is right for you. However, if you would like more of the classic two people in the booth and slide the curtain closed idea, the booth is definitely your pick. Both are fun ways to go, both are usable with props and both are an amazing reception addition that your guests will love!

4.) Sign or Not to Sign? -  One of the best creative props I have seen is the editable sign. You may choose to provide a sign that your guests can make their own with the assistance of a white, or chalk board. In this way your guests can be involved in writing creative messages to you. This is a sure way to make personality burst out of the picture itself! An example of this can be found above in the picture from the Etsy shop; MaroDesigns (http://www.etsy.com/shop/MaroDesigns). Imagine being able to write anything you come up with and including it in your pictures! So, ask yourself: Sign or not to sign?

5.) Choose your Artist wisely - Some may choose to hire a professional to setup and operate the booth, while others may choose to have a setup of their own and let their guests take their own pictures. In my experience I have noted that your guests are most likely to get their pictures taken when there is a fun charismatic photographer operating the booth, rather than if they have to take their own. Again, either way has pros and cons, so think on the matter with your guests in mind.

Here at the Forest House Lodge we work with one photo booth artist quite often, he does amazing work and we would definitely recommend him, his name is Joe Kalamaras. He is one of those people that just glows with the obvious statement that he loves his job! Joe is also one of our preferred DJ's and his information can be found at; www.sjsdiscjockey.com.  Here is some evidence of Joe's photo booth fun from a few of our couples and families…

      

There are a few other Photo Booth artists we would like to name…          

Allison Johnson: she has captured many beautiful memories for our Brides & Grooms here at Forest House Lodge and has just added the photo booth to her many talents. Please check out her work at www.pinupweddings.com.

The Goodness: They are a one of a kind dynamic duo and have ‘cornered the market’ when it comes to putting fun into the photo booth idea! They understand in-depth the essence of interactivity. You can view their work and contact them at; www.thegoodness.com.

You can be confident that a photo booth will put smiles on your guest’s faces! I remember one couple that used a photo booth in replacement of favors. The pictures were the favors because the guests receive the pictures almost immediately and get to take them home. If you are looking for a tip to save on additional cost, that may be something to consider. Lastly, do remember to always incorporate your wedding theme into the booth idea. Weddings should be an extension of your personality and it helps to tie everything together to create a unifying experience that everyone will surely remember.

In any case you can be assured that a photo booth will boost the excitement levels at any party. Happy Photo Booth Planning!

With love and care,

Sienna, Forest House Lodge Wedding Journalist

Welcome to the Forest House Lodge Blog from Sienna Forrester, Wedding Journalist

Good Afternoon my fellow lovers of all things wedding!

As many of you Forest House Lodge Brides and Grooms may already know, my name is Sienna Forrester and I do a few different things here at the Forest House: assistant to client services and coordination, day-of concierge and now – wedding journalist! My focus as wedding journalist is help bring specialized content, personality and excitement to the first ever Forest House Blog. I have been a part of the Forest House Lodge wedding legacy for three years now, and I must say I love what I do. I want to share my passion for weddings with you!

We are so excited to get the blog finally up and running, so first off I thought I would introduce the Forest House Lodge to those of you who have never met us…

We are a wedding world of our own!  Forest House Lodge is a private wedding venue dedicated to delivering dreams, making unforgettable memories and exceeding expectations! The Forest House staff has been wholeheartedly dedicated to weddings for the past 9 years totaling in more than 650 legacy weddings. We work with over 80 Brides & Grooms each year learning new things and forming new friendships each time a family walks through the front doors. Our intent is to be both professional and personal; we like people to feel as though the Lodge is a home away from home, a place where they can enjoy the company of family and friends, while being served fantastic food and drinks, cruise ship-like service, all the while remembering the love that brought them all together!

Our Blog’s Mission:

      The purpose of our blog is to talk about our passion with the wedding celebration with others inside and outside the Forest House experience, and to provide alternative, creative views on crafting unforgettable weddings. Being a business that is obsessed with innovation, we feel the constant need to be unique! We cherish it when Brides and Grooms come to us with their ideas that embrace who they are for all their guests to see and of course, we want to share these incredible ideas with you. We are interested in all aspects of a creative wedding world; therefore we will share with you so much more than just phenomenal wedding stories. Also, we know better than anyone that planning for a wedding is a very big undertaking, especially for those unfamiliar with all that is involved. Therefore, it is part of our personal mission and therefore the blog’s to help streamline the Forest House Lodge planning process and additionally, make it fun! The blog will assist in this by continuing to share ideas and inspirations that we discover upon our research journeys.

As the Forest House Lodge Wedding Journalist, it is my goal to relieve some of the stress of idea research and to simply help you to just have fun and enjoy being creative with your special day – always remember, your personality should show through in every phase of your wedding!

Ideas and what’s coming:

Legacy Weddings     

Over the past few years we have met some amazing, incredible couples and guests of whom we will never forget. We have so many good memories that we hold dear to us, and we would like to share some of their stories with you. We love hearing the stories of how our Brides and Grooms met and how the proposal was made. We will be sharing a few of those stories with you. When it comes to planning a wedding you can never have too many ideas! Whether its invitations, escort cards, centerpieces, dresses, cake, favors, décor… I could go on and on!

Innovation Updates

We want to keep you updated on the Forest House as well! Whether you have already been married with us or you are going to be married with us, or even attending a wedding, people want to know about the updates and improvements we are constantly making so innovation updates will be posted as well. There are few things better than the anticipation of a great idea, gift or thing but couple that with the ability to create ideas around use these innovations ahead of time is all the better.

Also, let us know if there are ideas that are swimming around in your wedding notebook that you would like to see done at the Forest House Lodge. The best innovations are the ones that YOU tell us you need. Don’t get us wrong, innovating is a great way for us flex our “creative muscles” but the point of it is to make your experience incredible and unrivaled. So send in those ideas!

Cake Pictorials (The Realms of Sweetness)

Each quarter or season we will place additional images of Monica’s creations on her very own Blog page “Cakes and the Realms of Sweetness”. Of course, these pastry sculptures are worth their weight in viewing pleasure but alas, we are an informational blog and we want you to get as much of a take away as is possible. That said the cake images will serve as a great visual library for your upcoming cake designs.

Sienna’s Idea Pulse

This is where real wedding research gets fun and informative! Each month I will serve the best from my note-taking spelunking through the caves of wedding wonderment! For example, our first posting in the Idea Pulse format will be on Photo-booths and how they can best be used at the Forest House. Such information would come from our personal experiences with photo-booths (an incredibly interactive way to get your guests involved), what our current vendors are doing and what we have seen out there in the land of wedding creativity that would probably work well for the Lodge.

That’s a lot to cover in our initial welcome post and we guarantee there is more to come because, fortunately, weddings change as tastes and generations change and we’re there to meet it head on! So whether you are a new couple enjoying the process of planning the year’s greatest celebration, a legacy couple that wants to be always be in touch with the incredible memory of your special day or perhaps you just want to know what all of the buzz is about concerning this ‘Forest House Lodge place’ that everyone keeps talking about, then look no further! We will do our best in pulling the lid off of the joy that erupts at our Lodge each weekend and give you a sneak peek into wedding bliss….

With love and care,

Sienna Forrester and the Forest House Lodge Blogging Staff
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