A wedding gift for our co-founder became our startup's newest product.

As someone who sells products to several thousand wedding professionals (mostly photographers) and who has photographed plenty of weddings, here's what I think:<p>- Instead of a "bulk discount for professionals", you should just sell them a $399 version that they can use to modify each title (looks like it's just a PNG file in the resources anyway).<p>- I can't see a bride and groom buying this very often–they are already busy and budget-conscious ... but I could see a best man, parent or bridesmaid doing it (assuming they had a macbook available). They often are bringing a laptop for a slideshow anyway, so it could work.<p>- I think the price might be a little high ... $49 to $79 seems more reasonable to me–especially since I'm still doing all the editing/uploading/sharing work myself afterwards.<p>- Use wedding blogs to get the word out and offer up some free demos or prizes. There are blogs for fancy weddings, green weddings, DIY weddings, budget weddings, etc.–and they are very popular with brides. It's a good way to get noticed.<p>- I can probably help you spread the word among some wedding photographers (including some who have well-read blogs). A lot of them are doing video too (as many SLRs now do HD video) so they could easily incorporate these into a DVD. Plus, several are doing photobooths or slideshows at receptions.<p>I'll blog about it too if you'd like–feel free to get in touch. I could get some photographers using it this weekend and giving you feedback.

I really like the idea. And the design is very nice (be it for the site or the app)<p>One thing though is that, from the site, I'm not really sure what I would get and in what form: where are the videos? are you hosting them? how do I change the settings of the app? do I get some kind of video album?<p>I see that the demo file left a couple of videos in my Movies folder, so I get it: I pay $99 to have the custom software with the right names and date, and it saves everything as local files in my Movies folder.<p>But, in that case, $99 is a lot of money! Correct me if I'm wrong but it's a one-time use app, right? I only get that one customized version for one wedding? That feels very very expensive… it's a nice packaging for PhotoBooth pretty much. And yes, for a wedding, that packaging makes a big difference, but I don't think I could buy it myself.<p>That being said, as Brian Cooley said, $99 is a drop in the bucket for most weddings, so I think that you could make some money with that (as I said, for a wedding the packaging is very important, thus the money will follow).<p>edit: to sum up, I'd say that it's a nice idea but to justify the $99 I think it would need to actually produce some kind of "video guestbook", something similar to an iMovie template, or what Animoto does. After the event, I just get a bunch of video files that I need to do something with…

I like this so much. $99 is a drop in the bucket for most weddings, it's a big market, and this seems so much less intrusive than the traditional "Aunt Ethel with a camcorder" approach.<p>One thing that stuck out to me was that the guy in the purple tie was a little out of frame. That would have made my wife object to this idea for fear that everyone would end up with their heads cut off. FWIW, I'd maybe move that part to the end or cut it altogether.<p>Like the music, too.

Photo booths have been mentioned and it's probably worth repeating. I've been to a couple of weddings where they rented out a photo booth and allowed the wedding attendees to take photos of themselves with their significant others. Of course by the end of the night, they're really goofy. The bride&#38;groom got one copy of the photos, the picture takers got the other copy.<p>You should have a "photo booth" option where someone could just walk up, click the photo booth option, and the system takes four timed photos (usually about 5 seconds in between poses). <a href="http://www.rentphotobooths.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.rentphotobooths.com/</a><p>You could then put those photos in the album.<p>Not everyone wants to give a personal video message (especially if you're shy and in an open reception hall), but maybe more (especially if drunk) would like to get a little crazy and contribute some goofy photos.

What a fantastic Idea! This little innovation here will probably create the most value the night of the wedding.. besides the obvious.<p>I got goosebumps watching the demo. I can see myself using this at my wedding.. the next step now is finding a wife! haha<p>Intrinsic product! Please do all you can to keep your idea in publics eye. I bookmarked your service, but i'm not sure I will remember the name when it comes to actually needing it.

very cool!<p>The music on the video threw me a little bit, maybe I'm just too much of an english centric guy. Also, I'd love to have heard the voices of the people come through a little bit. Maybe as a sample, but maybe just because if someone is talking at a camera I want to know it they are saying for some reason?<p>Again, very cool!

Great product idea!<p>But I have one recommendation that I think, though it would certainly take effort, especially if your company is mostly Mac programmers, would pay off bigtime. Offer hardware. Knock together an Atom-based system that comes preloaded with the software (obviously this would not be an OSX machine, a free stripped-down Linux distro would probably be a much better idea) that can be sold to the professional videographers or photographers, or even venue owners. This would open up the people that don't own Macs and, more importantly, the market of people uncomfortable with computers who wouldn't feel comfortable with investing this kind of money and importance in a software product and their computer.

If you were to offer a hardware system a modbook might be a good choice...<p><a href="http://www.axiotron.com/index.php?id=modbook" rel="nofollow">http://www.axiotron.com/index.php?id=modbook</a><p>You could do the video and hand written guest notes on the same device.

It's my parent's sliver wedding soon and they're having a big party. This seems like quite a cool idea and I was considering setting it up for them.<p>I'm not having too good a time with the demo though. I ran the program and it popped up the thingy with the video stream and the name box, but then keyboard didn't seem to work. The record your message button just pops up the "whoops you forgot to type your names" message and there appears to be no other way of shutting the darn thing down. I was just about to switch off the mac (and lose unsaved work in Photoshop) when the 10 minute timer kicked in and it shut itself down.<p>Still, sort out that bit and I think it's a great idea.

wow what a great idea! nowhere close to getting married, but i'd love to have this at my wedding.

I'm about to get married and I love the idea. I need to think about who I am going to entrust my macbook to. I'll ask the mrs. and get her opinion on it. I think this is a great idea.

I'd love to hear more, too. I wish I had thought of this!

This is a good call. My buddy had me put together a system like this for his wedding a few months ago. I was shocked that it didn't already exist.

I love the idea. You people might want to talk to wedding photographers or planners to promote this idea.

very cool! can we get a blog post on more of the back story?

make it work for Windows?

imho $99 is a bit too steep..

Great idea, but you should make one for plain and simpel "parties" and not just limit it to weddings IMHO I would buy one for my Bday party probably for example

I'm going to be synical first, and it may come across as mean, but it's the honest truth in my opinion...<p>Yes, if there's one more thing I wish I had to do at my wedding, it would have to be tech support for the web cam that wasn't working properly on the Guestbook Mac.<p>I also wish that every one of my guests put their hands all over my computer as they walked in and out the door.<p>Also, when they get drunk, I don't want them trying to film something for me while they stumble over my expensive computer with an open container.<p>Now, enough being a jerk.<p>I think some kind of mashup between live streaming and wedding templates is more appropriate since people already have video recorders in their pockets on their phones now.<p>Why not setup a public DropBox folder that everyone can drop their iPhone photos into while at the wedding?<p>I just don't think this idea was very thoroughly thought out. Putting your expensive Mac at the front door of the reception hall just seems ridiculous.