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Mrs. Penguin’s recent post “The Penguin Slideshow,” reminded me that I never posted about our slideshow.
I seem to have taken on the role of family historian since my 8th grade genealogy project. I carefully stored all my family’s historic photos, interviewed my father’s great aunts (who have all since passed away) and soaked up as much as I could. When Mr. Onion and I got engaged I started asking his mother questions about their family history and a few weeks before the wedding I asked her if I could go through her photo collection.
Naturally I wanted to share some of this history with our friends and family at the wedding where we would be starting our own chapter of our families’ histories.
Alternatively: “It all falls apart”
Miss Penguin here, two days before our wedding! I’d been planning a “surprise” slideshow since we first got engaged. By “surprise” I mean that, being a video professional, it seems like it would be ridiculous for me not to be making one, even though I don’t really mention it to Mr. Penguin. I started out slow and steady, putting fun blurs and painstakingly cutting out people to mimic movement on still pictures, but with less than 2 days left till go-time, I had about half the slideshow done and only an hour to finish it…so you’ll notice that unfortunately, it kind of falls apart at the end. I had the idea to split the slideshow into three parts, separated by song:
1. Us as kids (through high school)
2. Us in college with our friends
3. Us together
Well, 1/3 of a slideshow of JUST pictures of us is really, really boring. In the end, yes, this is our wedding, but at the same time, I think guests enjoy seeing themselves as well, and unfortunately, I just did not gather enough pictures from enough people.
Animoto is this great slideshow making tool that I found out about on the Soiree Special Events blog. I tested it out by uploading some of my favorites from the engagement shoot we had with Girls With Big Cameras. It turned out so cool that I wanted to share it with you all! It’s super easy to use - basically you just upload your pictures, choose music to set the slideshow to, and voila! It’s free for a 30-second slideshow. I decided to pony up the three bucks to try out the full-length version, and here’s what I came up with:
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. 
Read more…
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You know when you were in school, and you had a “stupid” question you were afraid to ask? Remember how teachers always told us, If you don’t understand something, chances are, someone else doesn’t, either.
Well, that’s the premise behind this quick post. I had a EUREKA! moment the other day, and while chances are there’s a much easier solution to my problem than I realize, I still thought that maybe one or two of you might find the subject of use (it’s pretty demographic specific)…
The subject is How to Do a Mac Slideshow With Two Photos at a Time.
iPhoto has that great slideshow option built into it - we all know this. It also has the very cool Ken Burns effect (which is that slow, random zoom or pan that makes a slideshow pack a visual punch) and music. Great. But I didn’t want just one photo at a time. I wanted two at a time - one each of Mr. LB and I. Starting from babyhood on, I wanted pictures of us at the same age sliding across the screen together (or even crossing!), showing who/what we were at the same point in our lives.
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In my previous post about our wedding slideshow, I mentioned that we were still trying to figure out the song to play during the photos of Mr. Jasmine from childhood to present.
Well, we found it!
Ryan Adam’s "Gonna Make You Love Me", from the latest Cingular commercial and Sweet Home Alabama (yes, we aren’t terribly original people). We both love the song and I think it fits so well with our other two choices, KT Tunstall’s "Suddenly I See" and Queen’s "You’re My Best Friend". It amuses me to no end that our uber-Indian wedding will feature a slideshow set to a guitar-heavy, folksy, rocking soundtrack 
Yay for wedding decision-making. What decisions have you made lately?
Create the honeymoon of your dreams.
Anyone who knows me knows this much is true: I’m a sentimental, schmaltzy sap. I cry during commercials for long-distance telephone services. I coo over adorable babies and in my eyes, *all* babies are adorable. I save ticket stubs, stuffed animals, greeting cards, invitations, notes, letters, old photos, fortunes from fortune cookies, etc.
So I knew one thing was given: there was definitely going to be a slideshow at our wedding. I know a lot of people find slideshows really boring and I think they can be if the right elements aren’t in place. But when a slideshow is well-done, it can be a poignant, funny, sweet moment during the reception.
– First, the slideshow has to be a reasonable amount of time. Always leave people wanting more! Ten minutes is the absolute maximum length of time before even your own mother starts zoning out.
A few days ago, star pupil LB asked how the development of our overwrought, overthought - erm, I mean, wondrously clever - wedding theme was coming along.
(If you missed the epic, here’s the Cliff’s Notes: Our wedding is themed “The Sweetest Type of Love.” Motifs of typing and candy with a romantic vintage twist.)
FUNNY YOU SHOULD ASK, LB. Because I happen to have graphic evidence of just how seriously I’m taking it.
I’ve been compiling short videos of Mr. L ever since we got engaged; my thinking is that maybe I could make them into a short movie to show at the reception. So to practice using iMovie, I concocted a little flick - an homage to our pets, for Mr. L. Titled to match our wedding theme, natch!
As I mentioned in a previous post, we shared a photo slide show with our guests at the reception and it was very well received. I think our families enjoyed seeing childhood photos of both of us as well as photos of themselves (we had a photo of almost every single guest). After the historic and childhood photos we moved on to photos of us with our friends and family during our courtship, and finally some engagement photos. Enjoy!
Best friend, his wife and Mr. Onion
My first attempt at working with our pictures and trying to capture a little video turned out just ok. I played around with it some more and after a couple days this is what I came up with. I used a program that comes free with any apple computer called iMovie. It’s so simple, literally drag and drop, tweak and done!
So what do you think? Feel like you were at my wedding? Hope so!
Many of our guests were amazed with the venue we chose, the delicious food and all the little DIY details that went into our beautiful day. As much as I could take credit for all the work, I must thank our bridal party for being by our side. The first person I’d like to thank would be Stan. He not only stood beside Mr. Violet as I walked down the aisle, he also created this incredible slideshow for us. From the very start, we knew he’d be the person to do the job because he has created awesome slideshows before. All we did was hand over our pictures and a few of our songs & he did the rest. As a surprise to us, we were not allowed to see the slideshow beforehand. I’m glad we didn’t because I’m sure my "wow" reaction must have been captured on film.
Mr. Violet is a huge video game nerd and this was the perfect way to capture us. I was never huge on video games, but I was hooked on the Mario Bros. when I was younger.. and hey, who wouldn’t want to be the Princess?
Stan, once again, you amazed us! Thank you so much! We love you!
…as evidenced by this picture at age six with my wedding gown Barbie. 
I’ve been scanning pictures for our slideshow and it’s brought back a flood of childhood memories. Poring over my family’s old photo albums has actually been one of my favorite parts of wedding planning. It’s so much fun reliving my childhood!
Perhaps one of the most special parts of our wedding was our slideshow. I used ProShow Gold which I downloaded for $69.95. I figure, it’s cheaper than paying someone to do it and I can use it again for vacations, my nephew, anniversaries and other life events. It’s a great program and very easy to use. Everyone at the wedding raved about the slideshow. (Probably because almost everyone at the wedding was in it somewhere.) I’ve used several other programs for slideshows, as blogged about previously. This by far gave the best results. All my hard work really paid off.
Click here for a short clip (well, 5 minutes) of our slideshow. In order to protect friends and family, I cut out the beginning with our baby pictures, the end with all the pictures of our friends and family and an audio thank you from us. The “story” might get a bit confusing since you don’t get the beggining or the end. The clip is just our “couple” pictures. The first part is our silly and fun pictures and the second is our romantic pictures. Enjoy!
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