#Tardisbooth

So this is going to be a picture heavy post. This week I am going to chat about our Tardis.

We had just got engaged this time last year and as we frequently did we would brainstorm ideas while driving on the weekend. We were away shopping and while on the motorway Catherine said we should have a photo booth at the wedding. Then simultaneously we both said "how cool would a Tardis photo booth be?" It was that point I said in my Wayne world voice "I will build you a Tardis!" That's how it all began.

I started on the plans, spent a lot of time on tardisbuilders.com and dreaming of how it would all come together.

I started building in January. I took a trip to B&Q with my dad. Filled up the van full of wood. I was giddy with expectation.

Between work and home life the only chance I had to work on the Tardis was on Saturdays. I would wake up and go to work. Every time I finished for the day I would show Catherine pictures of my progress. It looked like a giant brown box but to me it was so much more. Everytime I looked at it all I could see was the finished product.

Time drew on and the weeks turned to months. Every week I would spend my spare time working out details of how it would come together. Where to get the paint? What is the perfect colour? What style will the windows be? How to get windows on it? How to make the doors open? How to make sure the doors stay closed? So much time was spent inventing ways to build the Tardis.

It was time to paint. Catherine and I went to home base in Omagh. Now I must say home base became like my second home, every Saturday morning I would pop in a grab some wee item that I had be mulling over all week. I'd also take the opportunity to call in with the Morris'. We took our Tardis cake topper with us as well as the Pantone number and the colour name (Oxford blue). Homebase were able to match the paint and then begun the only pain of Tardis building. I hate painting. I am no good at it. However this was a labor of love. Base coats, drying, first coat, drying, it takes forever!!!

It was almost there! Thanks to signature signs in ballygawlley they were able to print the "police public call box" signs and now it was the headache of actually turning what I had build into a photo booth. A computer monitor from Amazon £15. Then after a lot of research a canon selphy printer cp500 bought from ebay. Ink and paper from Amazon.

One of the main issues I had was that I wanted the photo booth to be completely automated. One big red button and that's it. Takes the pictures, does voice prompts and prints without any other input. The issue is that there is no real usb red button on the market. After a couple of weeks of pondering. I ended up with a guitar foot peddle linked by usb with a red cover. I used a piece of software to record the input and matches it to the key required to start the program.

The software used to run the photo booth was "sparkbooth" it works out at around £35 and it does offer a lot of customisation. We designed up the photos to print with our how geeks get married logo.

It was all ready.

Thank you to lusty beg for letting us set up the Tardisbooth the night before as it would have been a nightmare to do it on the day.

It went down a storm. I looked really impressive and it functioned well. All our guest who had a chance to get in had a personalised keepsake of the day.