It's been more than a month since the wedding, but Amber and I
are still frequently reminiscing about how beautiful and great
everything turned out and how much fun we (and hopefully our
guests) had. There is so much to share that I'm sure I'll do
at least a couple more posts, but tonight I'm going to talk about
something we made for the reception that I'm particularly proud of:
our wedding photo booth.
First, a little back story: Amber and I have a fondness for
photo booths. I'm not sure how it started, but when we
encounter a photo booth, more often than not, we get even more
sappy than usual and get some pictures. They aren't always
the best pictures, but they are fun.

As you can see, we even used one for
our save the date cards. We enjoy them so much that we
thought it would be great to have one at our wedding. Amber
did some research (she did most of the leg work for vendors) and
found that it would be pretty expensive to rent one, so I decided
to take it on as a DIY project.
I have a netbook that I received as a bonus from work that I
figured could be used to run the software. For printing the
pictures, I needed to find a decent photo printer - the printer I
had wasn't up for the task. A good webcam was the only other
hardware that would be required. Of course there was the
matter of constructing the booth itself, but I figured we could
build a simple frame of some sort and cover it with drapes. I
figured that I could probably do it all (given the components that
I had on hand) for about $250.
Part of the reason I wanted to do the project was to give myself
a coding project to work on. I'll do another post going into
specifics on this part, but I ended up building a Silverlight
application to simplify the webcam integration and to do some
animations in the UI without too much effort. I spent many
hours coding and testing the application so that it was relatively
easy to use for the most novice computer users among our
guests. I have many pictures like this from these
sessions:

And a few like this:

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, after all.
The next step was to plan and build the booth. It needed
to be portable and quick and easy to setup. I figured that I
could do construct a frame with PCV pipe pretty easily. I
thought about it and decided that I should probably prototype with
some stuff around the house, just to get my mind going on how it
would go together. After some tinkering and a quick trip to
the office supply, this is what I came up with:

As you can see, I constructed my prototype from disposable pen
tubes and paperclips. I misread the number of pens in the
package I bought, so I couldn't complete the prototype, but it
allowed me to visualize how things would go together and the
couplings I would need to buy. I tried to find these at home
depot, but they only carried the standard plumbing connections,
elbows and tees, but not the three-way connections for the corners
or the four-way connections for the middle back. Fortunately,
Amber in her research found an article by someone that had done something
similar (silly me, I didn't look at it until after I did my
prototype) that referenced a site where you could mail order the
joints I needed.
The next step was to purchase the PVC and somehow get it home
and cut. For those of you who haven't purchased PVC pipe, it
is sold in ten foot sections. Given the length of the pipe
and the number of pieces I would need to cut it into, I figured I'd
need a friend with power tools and a truck. While I waited
for one of my friends with such equipment at their disposal, I
happened to talk to my dad about the project and he suggested that
PVC is really quick to cut with just a hacksaw and I could do it in
the parking lot if necessary to fit it in the car.
Things were already behind schedule and I was eager to get this
part done, so I figured what the hell, and Amber and I went to Home
Depot to give it a shot. We purchased our PVC and were
surprised to find that with my back seats folded down, we could fit
the ten foot PVC pipe in my two-door Honda Accord! They went
all the way from the back of the car into the passenger seat and on
the dash, but all nine pieces fit.
Once we got it home, I started cutting. Fortunately, my
dad was right and the hacksaw made very quick work of the
PVC. I marked the pipe with painter's tape and scored the
pipe with a file so I'd get relatively straight cuts.


Initially, I planned on having every section of pipe be uniform
and planned on cutting four foot sections, essentially stacking one
cube on top of another with a shared edge, but once I started
putting things together, it became clear that an eight-foot tall
booth was going to be too much.

Fortunately, since I was cutting two four-foot sections out of
the ten foot pipe, I had two foot left over from each pipe.
So the top section became two foot tall, for an overall height of
six foot. Much more manageable.

The next task was covering the booth. I'd planned on using
curtains, but unfortunately, we couldn't find ones that were
reasonably inexpensive, that were reasonably opaque and would
fit. After several trips to stores looking for some or an
alternative like sheets, we gave in and went to a fabric store to
see what we could find. After dealing with a few surly and
non-helpful employees, we found just enough fabric on clearance
that met our criteria. Amber's mom was instrumental for this
part, as we don't own a sewing machine and I haven't operated one
since junior high. It turns out that she is a master.
We took the frame down to Maple Valley, and she knocked out the
panels in no time flat.

We really couldn't have done it without her help. We kept
one of the curtains we tried as the door. Here's the finished
booth.

This post has obviously turned into a novel, so I'm going to
stop here for tonight. In the next part, I'll write about
integrating the components. In the meantime, here's one last
picture: Amber and me in the finished booth at the reception.