Sunday, August 24, 2008

PoGo or no PoGo? (Guestbook)

With the latest trend in having a photo booth at a wedding (thanks sandy), it really got me thinking. Reading sites, the rental fee is roughly $1000-$2000 for a 4 hour rental with unlimited pictures (in the states). I think this would be great for a wedding or even guestbook idea. Now being in a smaller city, it's very difficult to find a photo booth to rent. So after doing some searching, I found the Polaroid PoGo.

The Polaroid PoGo is an instant mobile printer about the size of a blackberry that lets you print directly from your cellular phone or digital camera. It launched in the States this July 2008 and hasn't been released in Canada yet. Obviously the quality of the pictures is not spectacular, but it does fit perfectly with our guestbook plan. The idea we're playing around with, is to have guests take a picture and sign their own picture to place in our guestbook. Cool idea hey? Now for the cons of the PoGo:
1) Time Factor - it requires 1 minute to print 1 picture. (250 guests, 2 guests/picture, time required is 2 hours just to print!).
2) Cost - cost in the U.S. is $150 (printer) + $10 (for 30 pages of paper). So to cut down on the time to print the pictures, we would probably require 2 PoGos. Total cost with the paper would probably be $350.00
Brother came up with a great idea; to have the helpers take the pictures, and then later print all the pictures and distribute to the guests at dinner time to sign to avoid a big lineup. We're still playing around with the idea, because I don't know how the battery would hold up by printing pictures for a straight hour or two and the fact that it's not available in Canada yet.

Another option I found was Picture This Album (Alexandra's thought). They provide a basic package kit which includes:
1) Photo Guestbook (holds 30 polaroids)
2) Polaroid Classic Camera
3) Polaroid 600 Single Pack (40 exposures)
The price for this is $149.95 + Shipping and Handling and would cost roughly the same amount as the PoGo (as the PoGo doesn't include a Guestbook).

I guess only time will tell to see if we decide to do a photo guestbook, or if we just keep things simple with a regular one.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Heyooo!!!
I was at a wedding recently and they had something similar setup. I think they just had a laptop and brought in a printer. They would take the pics then distribute the pics as people were eating dinner. Kinda funny cause they'd be walking around looking at different tables trying to spot the ppl in the picture. Although it would be beneficial if the helpers were all hot chicks! LOL, i guess only beneficial to lonely single handsome fellows like I. MUAHAHAHA.