Have you thought about getting an instant camera or two to spice up your guest book?
I will come straight out and admit this is a shameless plug for a company my wife Lucy & I run together as a side hustle but stay with me because firstly it's not an ad the whole way through and secondly it's actually a pretty cool idea. Wedding guest books are pretty dull affairs in general so it's pretty understandable that people try to spice up the concept a bit. I've seen a few interesting takes, including little bits of wood which people write on and then drop into a container. They're sometimes heart shaped which is a bit twee for my liking but each to their own. I've also seen an audio guest book a few times which is a pretty cool idea. Guests pick up a retro telephone attached to a recording device and leave you a little chatty message. Cute.
My favourite though (probably because I'm a wedding photographer) is instant cameras. (You might know them as Polaroids but along with Kleenex and Hoover, this is actually a brand name, and Polaroid aren't even the market leaders anymore - the biggest sellers are the Fujifilm Instax series.)
We actually started renting out instant cameras because so many of my couples had them at their weddings and when I asked about them it turned out they were really hard to get hold of. Your options were either rent them from a local company (but there's not many of them and the ones that do exist don't let you book online without enquiring first) or buy them outright. Buying them doesn't sound like a terrible idea to start with, they're not even that expensive (about £100) when you think about how much you're spending on a wedding. You might even be thinking that you could use it after the wedding to get the most out of your money. Here's the catch though; much like the scam we all know and love with printers where the manufacturers loose money on printers and rake in the money with the ink, film for these cameras is stupidly expensive. Prices obviously vary a little depending on model, type and where you buy, but on average you're talking roughly 75p every time you press that shutter button. If you have 100 guests and they all take one photo, that's £75. But they're not going to take just one photo, are they? and when you're left with the camera afterwards, how often are you really going to be pressing that button knowing it'll cost you 75p per click? I'd be willing to bet that camera's going to be sitting around gathering dust once the wedding's over, which is a bit of a waste in my opinion. There's also the slight pickle that you can never quite know exactly how much film you're going to need. If you buy too little then your guests will burn through it in minutes and you might as well have not had it. Too much and you'll have loads left over afterwards.
Enter my wife & I with Instant Camera Hire. You're welcome. Renting an instant camera rather than buying will undoubtedly save you money (especially if you bought more film than you needed) but it's also better for the environment since you don't have leftover unused electrical equipment. Our packaging is reusable and recyclable AND made from sustainably sourced material, and we use Royal Mail so it's a journey your post was already making. Finally, in case this wasn't a hard enough sell already (I'm so sorry but I do actually need to pay the mortgage so it's a necessary evil), It's really flipping convenient. Do you really want to spend hours on end scouring the web looking for the best prices on everything, buying stuff separately from loads of retailers and making your own instructions when you could just click a few buttons and have the whole lot arrive on your doorstep and then get collected again a week later? Yea. Thought not.
Save yourself the time, effort and money and use the excess cash to pay for another guest's dinner.
Ok, Anstey out. You can go back to whatever you were doing.
Hire an instant camera or two for your wedding:
If you're interested and my ramble waffle didn't put you off, head over to our website (www.instantcamerahire.co.uk) and take a peek. Couples who are booked with me get an extra pack of film thrown in for free because you have impeccable taste in photographers. Well done you.
