Mrs. Eggplant, San Francisco
Age and Occupation: 28, Human Resources
Fiance's Age and Occupation: 24, Associate Marketing Manager
Engagement Date: January 19, 2007
Wedding Date: October 20, 2007
Blogging Since: May 31, 2007
Venue: Ceremony at a cement and stained glass cathedral and reception at a boutique hotel ballroom
About Me: I'm a shopping junkie who lives to discover great deals and a craft addict that loves to scrapbook and knit. My profile picture was taken on the day I got engaged which is why my smile is so huge!
How We Used Media To Personalize Our Wedding, Part III
April 22nd, 2008 @ 10:26 am by Mrs. Eggplant
It has officially been six months since the wedding (happy half-year, Mr. Eggplant!). I thought I’d celebrate by sharing one of my most favorite parts of our wedding: Our slideshow. I’ve written about how we used media as an inexpensive means to make our wedding incredibly personal. You’ve already seen our entrance music video and heard our first dance songs. But the grand media finale was a thoughtful, embarrassing, and slightly cheesy slideshow that Mr. Eggplant created.
Slideshows usually aren’t the main event at weddings. Some brides opt out of making one for fear of boring their guests. After all, who wants to inundate people with an endless barrage of baby pictures? Well, when our wedding was over, a comment I repeatedly received from our guests was how much they enjoyed our slideshow. Many even told me that it was their favorite event of the night. What? No one noticed my hand-punched place cards that took weeks to assemble? What about my color-coordinated jellybeans? Apparently, our slideshow received the most bang for our buck, in terms of wedding prep hours. 
Putting together a slideshow is no small feat. It’s not easy to dig through a lifetime of pictures and choose only a sampling that reflects your life story. But the end result is worth the work. With a few man-hours and a little personalization, a wedding slideshow can be an experience the people will enjoy and even remember. Your wedding will probably be the only time in your life that you can force a large, captive audience to watch ten minutes of footage all about you, so why not make it entertaining? 
You may even get to watch your guests reacting like this:
Mr. Eggplant’s cousin watching our slideshow.
Or like this:
My MOH during our slideshow.
Me, totally embarrassed from the tween-year pictures that Mr. Eggplant included in our slideshow.
*All images property of Apertura Photography
I can’t believe I’m about to share my awful adolescent pictures on the internet. But for the sake of helping other brides, I will endure a little embarrassment. If you happen to find our slideshow useful, you can thank Mr. Eggplant for the video. Without his help, I wouldn’t have been able to post it for you guys. He went through the trouble of voicing over names to protect the privacy of our family members. He also has quite a few unflattering, nerd-o pictures in the video, so beware.
(Minutes 1:35 to 3:29 are all baby pics, so skip to minute 3:30 if you get bored.)
The slideshow project was Mr. Eggplant’s baby from start to finish. As a mass communications major in college, Mr. Eggplant has always had a love for all things media-related. He really wanted our slideshow to be funny, entertaining, and illustrative of our story. Many long nights were spent poring over video footage and scanning piles of baby pictures. Papa Eggplant gave us some video footage of me as a toddler. The footage added an element that our guests really enjoyed. After everything was scanned and uploaded, we spent a few hours recording a narration of the video. Mr. Eggplant taught himself the tips and tricks of iMovie through various web resources. As a final touch, he thoughtfully paired the perfect songs with each video and photo montage. The tunes that he picked and the timing of the music made all the difference in the world (watch minute 6:50 of the slideshow if you’re not sure what I’m talking about. ).
I hope you enjoyed our wedding slideshow. If you have any questions regarding Mr. Eggplant’s process, leave ‘em here and I’ll send him on over to answer.
42 Responses to “How We Used Media To Personalize Our Wedding, Part III”
Hi! I would love to know how you put together a slide show. Can you tell me more about the process, from which computer program you used to any tricks of the trade I might need to know? Thanks!!!
Thanks for sharing, that was awesome! I thought it was watching my friends growing up that always made me cry, but clearly it’s strangers too! I love wedding slideshows!
Wow. That was beautiful and put together so well. It looked very professional.
How lovely that you could share that with your friends and familiy.
My FI wanted to do a slideshow and I was hesitant about it but I think this might have pushed me over the edge to give it a try. You set the bar so high!
I would love to know how you got your childhood video footage into digital form. And what slideshow software did you use to incorporate both photos and video? Great job Mr. Eggplant!
Damnit!! It’s only 9 a.m. and I’m already crying at my desk!
Wonderful slideshow - and congrats again!
i always love the slideshows at weddings! great job! can i ask…at what point during the reception did you play this?
great job guys! the personal voiceovers were a nice touch.
Awww…that was beautiful! I don’t even know you two and I got all misty-eyed! Good job Mr. Eggplant on a lovely video!
*teary* love that last part where Mr. Eggplant kisses you on the forehead!
PS. That was some pretty wild red hair you had back then
that’s awesome!
what that first song on the slideshow? I’ve heard it but don’t know the name. thanks!
love the slide!
i looooved your slideshow! i watched the whole thing so personalized and cute! really like how you guys added childhood videos!
WOW Eggie! This is so incredibly personal and sweet and I just LOVED watching it from start to finish. Thanks so much for sharing it with us!!!
that was awesome…i don’t even know you guys but it made me tear up! tell the hubby great job!
@hokouk77: I don’t know much about the programs, but I do know that Mr. EP used iMovie on his sister’s Macbook. He said that Windows Vista comes with a program that is comperable. I’ll ask him if he has any other tips to share.
Great Slideshow, and you’re right, the music is perfect Kudos to Mr. Eggplant.
this is the best slideshow I’ve seen!
@Monica: You can get your old super 8/vhs footage transferred onto a DVD, that can then be edited in iMovie. If you google “film video transfer,” a list of resources will appear and you can research the option that works best for you.
For one of Mr. Eggplant’s childhood clips, we didn’t have time to get the footage transferred onto DVD. Mr. EP simply played the VHS tape on a TV, and videotaped it with another camera. The quality was a bad, but we got by.
@jw: We played the slideshow at the tail end of dinner, as the guests were finishing up. It was the perfect time to play the video since everyone was already seated and ready for a little entertainment. Following the slideshow, we did the father/daughter dance and a we had about 30 minutes of dancing before we cut the cake. Hope that helps!
@ Everyone else: Thanks for watching, everyone. I hope I didn’t bore you!! Pengy, I can’t wait to see your slideshow (if you’re doing one) since you actually work in TV. I just know it’ll be amazing!
I love your slideshow! The voice-overs are hilarious…Mr Eggplant did a great job with matching the pics to the songs!
Tell Mr. Eggplant that MassComm did him good! That was a great slideshow - everything was very well coordinated and it felt personal. How wonderful to have your story laid out like that. Token Asian Christian? I love it! You guys are funny…..
@Lee: I just checked with the Mr. on the song title. It’s called “edge of the ocean” by Ivy.
what a wonderful slideshow! its one of the best i’ve ever seen! it was funny and adorable! also, i notice your a kdphi! i’m a kdphi too! haha just thought that it was interesting, btw Mrs. peony is a kdphi too!
That was adorable! I’m completely inspired to create a slideshow now! And Mr. Eggplant is a champ for putting that whole thing together. Tell him that he’s making the other fiances look bad! 
(BTW, my sister is a kdphi at UCSD!)
i love the end…so cute
I normally hate wedding slide shows, but I LOVE yours. If Mr. Eggplant has anymore advice, please do share. I would love to do this.
my favorite slide show yet! i was not bored at all and i didn’t even skip which i usually do.
thank you for sharing this with us.
thank you for sharing with us!~ this was a great slide show! you are really my favorite weddingbee!
too cute! thanks for sharing! it’s definitely motivation to get off my butt and work on ours.
@Monica: To answer your question about getting old media files onto a computer, Mr. Eggplant told me that my dad was able to hook up a VCR to his PC because he had a component cable input on the back of his PC. So, VCR –> Component Cable –> PC (See this diagram for an illustration: http://www.finearts.utexas.edu/aah/facilities/desl/tutorials.cfm)
You will also need software on your computer to capture the video and turn it into an .avi file that iMovie can then edit. I’m not sure what software my dad had, but I’ll ask and get back to ya.
Hope that helps!
wow.. that was sooo adorable. and yes the music was perfect, yay for doogie!
All 3 of your media creations were AWESOME! I feel silly tearing up about a couple I don’t even know — you guys did a fabulous job on this!! Thanks so much for sharing!
Ah! Thats so great. We have been toying with every program we have on our PC and Mac to try and put something like this together and its not turning out well at all. I gave up on iMovie until I saw this.
I would be SO grateful for Mr.Eggplant’s tips. Maybe we could just pay him to do it for us?
I absolutely love it!! Way to go Eggplant!
that was amazing and so wonderfully put together! Great job to the both of you and thanks for sharing
i have a dvd format of our slideshow that someone has made for us… do you know how to get it online?
Hi Mrs. Eggplant. I saw that you used Apertura as you photog. I was hoping I could talk to you about their work. Please email me if you have a moment.
Thanks!
Kymberli,
The goal is to get it into a nice and tidy format for YouTube, Yahoo, Voeh, etc. You’ll need a DVD ripper for this. Keep in mind that YouTube has a 10 min limit for videos. That’s why we chose not to use YouTube.
If you have MAC, there’s a program called HandBrake that is very useful. You can choose the frame rates (quality) and dimensions (how the intended viewing area is) very easily. I highly recommend this tool. It sometimes crashes (or at least it did for me) unexpectedly, so be patient with it. Ripping a DVD taxes your computer. I chose to rip it for the iPod. The settings for that usually works well for streaming video (YouTube, Yahoo! Video).
MactheRipper is also good for getting DVD content onto your computer, but it’s older and I saw better reviews on Handbrake.
If you have a PC, most of the best ones are paid software. I don’t know why this is, but I have a Dell and I did a lot homework on this and for whatever reason, there isn’t a Handbrake equivalent for PCs. One suggestion that I know works well is AoA DVD Ripper (but you have to pay for it). Other than that, I can’t recommend something I haven’t tried. Sorry!
I hope this helps.
Eggie, I cheered for another HS in that district ! we were prolly at some games together ! LOL
i love your page! so many fabulous ideas and entertaining posts. i wish i knew about your site for my wedding. and i just saw that you’re kdphi from alpha chapter…my big is from there =) take care!
Mrs. Eggplant: Is there anyway you could send me your template for your BM newsletter? I LOVE IT! You are so creative.
