Hosting a SXSW Event? Take it Up a Notch With a Luxury Photo Booth!

Our favorite week in Austin is almost here: South by Southwest! Once a year this film and music festival gathers the most creative people to our city and you can feel the buzz from having them all in one place. Austin is the perfect host for such a monumental festival, and we love joining in on the party!

Are you or your company hosting an event for SXSW this year? Here’s how a luxury photo booth rental will take it up a notch.

Give Party-Goers Something More Fun Than a Red Carpet

SXSW has enough red carpets and fancy photo opportunities. A photo booth gives attendees a chance to let their hair down and have fun. You can’t snap goofy face photos on a red carpet, but you can in a photo booth! 

Photo booths are also more fun because you can balloons, streamers, neon signs, props, and more fun elements. You can also create custom branded photo strip templates to get your name circulating.

Get More People to Your Party

All week long during the festival there are amazing parties, concerts, and comedy shows happening. How do you compete and get more people to your public event? By offering the best vibe and fun things to do!

A photo booth mobilizes your party-goers. You can’t simply serve drinks and expect people to stand around and talk anymore. They need something memorable to take part in. 

Along with a photo booth rental, consider offering other interactive elements like games, a live painter, or a cigar roller.

Create Buzz With Instant Social Sharing

All of our photo booth rentals offer instant sharing so that guests can post to social media right away. Whether they create photos of GIFs, they can post them and tag you to create more buzz for your party. 

If you’re throwing multiple parties throughout the week, instant sharing is a great way to get the word out and draw a bigger crowd to the next one. 

Give Your Guests a Memorable Keepsake to Take Home With Them

Old school is back! Along with instant sharing, guests love having a physical photo strip to take home with them. It serves as a great party favor and will remind them how much fun they had at your event (which will make them come back next year!). 

Like we said before, the more you can offer your guests, the more they’ll show up and engage with your brand. A photo booth strip is perfect because it’s custom and personal.

Capture Behind-the-Scenes Moments of Your Cast

Hosting a party for your cast and crew to celebrate your amazing film premiere? Give your hardworking team a chance to let loose in the photo booth! They’ll love having a keepsake from this amazing time in their lives. 

Plus, if this is the first time your whole cast and crew has been together since you shot the film, it’s a great way for them to reconnect and have fun together.

Go All Out With Your SXSW Photo Booth

Everything is bigger in Texas, and SXSW is not a time to play it small! Instead of a traditional photo booth backdrop, why not up the ante with a streamer backdrop? Why not add a fun balloon garland or neon sign? Scroll through our photos below to see what we can do at Oh Happy Day Booth!

Book Your SXSW Photo Booth Today!

Your SXSW event isn’t complete without a photo booth. Trust us, your guest will love it and always remember how much fun they had at your party!
Ready to book your SXSW photo booth? Contact us today to get started!

Ma Maison Open House | Best Austin Photo Booth

Mosaic Church Date Your Mate Event | Austin Photo Booth

Creating a great event hashtag

Importance of developing an event hashtag

Regardless of the type of event you’re hosting, a hashtag can be useful for compiling photos and interacting with guests before, during and after an event! For corporate events, an event hashtag not only allows the attendants to look back on the event, but it creates online visibility and is a lucrative way to engage guests. Event hashtags, when used properly, create a digital presence and attraction to your brand or company. For weddings, using a specified hashtag means guests can see photos of themselves that might’ve gone untagged or missed without the event hashtag. Most importantly, this allows the bride and groom to look back on the event and relive all the fun memories from one of the best days of their lives.

Here are a few ideas on how you can get started on creating a unique one for your event!

How to develop a hashtag for a corporate event or fundraiser

1. Keep it short. Simplicity is key.

Your hashtag should be as short as possible and take up as few characters as possible. If your guests will be posting on Twitter, the last thing you want to do is take up too many of their limited 140 characters! Abbreviate event names that are long. For example, Austin music festival Blues on the Green uses the hashtag #botg, as opposed to #BluesOnTheGreen, which is pretty long. Keeping it simple also means fewer people will forget exactly what your hashtag is. If they can’t remember, they won’t use it.
 

2.  Use the event's name and location.

If the convention name is BeautyCon, using #beautyconLA may be more effective than simply #beautycon.

3. Include the year for annual events.

If creating a post for an event that occurs annually, including the year to specify which year is attended - for example, using #beautycon2017 or #beautycon17.
 

4. Make sure to determine a good event hashtag well in advance.

Once it has been created, start using it yourself as an organizer and notify your audience about it. For example, runners who are training for the Austin Marathon in 2018 can use the hashtag #austinmarathon2018 when posting a photo of them training in the months leading up to the race. There is great power in promoting a hashtag before an event, especially if the goal is to encourage participation from the public.
 

5. Consistency.

For annual events, having a consistent hashtag every year also allows the participants to refer back to previous years’ photos by simply changing the year at the end of the hashtag.

Photo by Pine and Blossom

How to develop a hashtag for a wedding

Wedding hashtags have recently become increasingly popular, so it is important for your hashtag to be unique. After all, you don’t want to see photos from a random wedding that isn’t yours showing up under your wedding hashtag feed! Here are a few tips on creating a hashtag that is personal and specific to your big day.

 
1. Make the hashtag easy for guests to remember.

Wedding hashtags that have a play on words may be easier for guests to remember. Consider mashing your names together or focusing on the last name if you plan on sharing a surname after you’re married. Puns are always welcomed (and totally encouraged, if you ask us!).

For example, one of our recent wedding clients’ new last name is Newberry, and their hashtag was #TheNewestBerry! We even saw a wedding where the the groom’s surname is Morgan, so they chose the hashtag #ILoveYouMorganAnything. Get punny, because the funny hashtags are typically the most memorable!
 

 2. Avoid any hashtags that could be potentially misspelled by your guests.

Try shortening any long names or move words around to avoid having two of the same letters next to each other. For example #davidandashley looks much better than #ashleyanddavid.
 

3. Use a hashtag generator.
If you're having trouble coming up with an original hashtag, try checking out a hashtag generator to get started. Sometimes it’ll get your creative juices flowing and help you come up with something unique.
  

4. Get the word out about your hashtag.
If a hashtag for the wedding has been created before the couple walks down the aisle, use it on photos of the couple engaged. If you are the one walking down the aisle, consider using it when snapping a photo of you dress shopping or wedding planning. Put it on your save-the-date and your wedding website and get the word out!

Photo by Amanda Hartfield

We hope these tips help you create the perfect hashtag for your event. What's your favorite hashtag you've seen so far?

Mercury Hall Open House

January has already flown by, and we kicked off 2017 with an open house at one of our favorite Austin venues: Mercury Hall! We had a blast meeting the future brides-to-be and guests. Luckily for us, we had the best of both worlds by being under the clear tent, which was strung with festoon lights, and being able to peek into the chapel and its stunning stained glass windows! Even though it is minutes from downtown, the greenery that surrounds Mercury Hall makes it feel secluded from the busy streets of Austin. The Loot Vintage lounge was placed in the middle of the canopy, and we were drooling over their blue velvet bench in particular! It’s never really hard work when we get to work alongside other amazing vendors such as Gypsy Floral, who was there to create beautiful bouquet arrangements for each guest, Feathers and Frosting, who offered delicious cake tastings, and the beautiful custom designs of Parcel Design Co. (Fun fact, the owner of Parcel Design Co was actually the room mate of our owner, Kelsey!) Vanilla Orchid catered some of the most delicious bites for the event as well. We really could not have asked for a better Thursday night! We love open houses because it gives us a chance to meet and chat with guests on a more personal level and get a better feel of what they are wanting at their special event. Big thank you to Mercury Hall for hosting such a wonderful night, we cannot wait to meet YOU at the next one! 

Beatriz & Nelson's Wedding

Beatriz and Nelson had such a gorgeous wedding at Ma Maison! Fun music filled the reception hall as just about every single guests danced their butt off, and everyone make a point to come take a photo in the booth. The props were a huge hit, and we loved seeing all the smiling faces come through the line! Beatriz and Nelson were even sweet enough to offer us a plate of one of the best dinners we've had at a wedding! Such a great night!

Congrats, friends!

Marsala Wedding Inspiration

Here at Oh Happy Day Booth, we're always searching for ways to make your photo booth rental cohesive with your wedding theme and color scheme!

When Pantone rolled out Marsala as their 2015 Color of the Year, we instantly fell in love. We're still so excited that this shade still hasn't gone out of style, and we think it's the perfect fit for a fall or winter wedding! Several of our backdrops would look so amazing with marsala, but the gold/marsala color combo is just about unbeatable. 

1. Ring box: Mrs. Box, Photo by Leah Golder, Styled by Chic and Pretty Events
2. Flower girl: Photo by Kristen Kilpatrick
3. Backdrop: Oh Happy Day Booth
4. Nails: Via BuzzFeed
5. Couple: Photo by Erica Velasco Photographers
6. Cake: Photo by Ashley Cook Photography
7. Invitation Suite: Laura Damiano Designs, Photo by @girlyhammer
8. Shoes: Photo by Tina Chiou Photography
9. Tablescape: Photo by Ashley Cook Photography

We can't wait for Pantone to release their 2017 color (or will it be color(s) like it was this year??)! According to House Beautiful, even with the fall season quickly approaching, it looks like spring is on Pantone's mind! They rolled out a few predictions of what hues will be popular this coming spring, and we're crossing our fingers that Flame and Island Paradise are in the running for the title of Color of the Year!

Are you getting married this fall? What are your wedding colors? 

Hannah & Zach's Wedding

We got to booth it up with Hannah and Zach at their Fort Worth wedding alongside our sister company, Kelsey Butler Photography! The Brooks at Weatherford provided the perfect backdrop for their big day, and the reception hall was essentially a gorgeous indoor renovated barn! It was a rainy day, but that couldn't stop the fun. We printed out about a million photos and we even got to watch as guests got creative as they signed the couple's guest book upgrade!

Congratulations, Mr. and Mrs. Doty!!

Photos by Kelsey Butler Photography