Don’t forget its the Dorset Wedding Festival which Giggle Booth (Dorset) are sponsoring – taking place on Sunday 7th April at Holten Lee in Dorset, you can find out more about it by visiting the website http://www.dorsetweddingfestival.co.uk/ 

It promises to be a great day, with lots of the countys best suppliers on hand as well as live entertainment and even an inflatable pub! It sounds like the perfect day out!

We have a few tickets available for the event – if you’re interested e-mail dorset@gigglebooth.co.uk; you can also buy tickets in advance by visiting the Dorset Wedding Festival website – just click here

As sponsors of the Groom’s tent, you’ll find us there with an opportunity to capture your very own Dorset Wedding Festival themed photo plus special show offers… So what are you waiting for? See you on the 7th April…

“Something Borrowed Magazine is proud to host The Dorset Wedding Festival. This is the first event of its kind in the area and is following on from the success of The Dorset Vintage Wedding Fair. This is a  full-scale wedding fair in Dorset.

The event will be held in marquees at Holton Lee, near Poole,  on Sunday 7th April 2013, 11:00 am – 4:00 pm.

Think of it like the biggest wedding fair you’ll go to in Dorset, add live music, chill out areas, a tearoom serving hot drinks and cake, food vans, shopping and loads of wedding ideas – THAT’s a wedding festival. 

• Vintage  - full of the area’s leading vintage suppliers from cakes to crockery, from dresses to venue styling, guaranteed to inspire!
• Groom-to-be (like a crèche but for men!) – Drop your h2b off where he can play games, have a pint and get some ideas for the wedding.
• Bride-to-be – Do not miss this marquee – fashion shows, wedding suppliers, dresses and more to be seen
• DIY – Get all the help, inspiration and ideas you need from this marquee
• Food & drink – Chill out in the inflatable pub, relax and enjoy afternoon tea or try some of the delights on offer from our foodie experts…yum.
  Main stage – check out our line up page for details on this year’s performers – they are incredible!

This is a must for anyone planning their wedding and the one event where the men will have something to do. As well as the usual exhibition, there will be live music from bands and singers you can hire for your big day and an area where you can purchase snacks or lunch.”

Not only did we receive some great feedback on Facebook, Twitter and via e-mail it also caused a fantastic conversation at Giggle HQ!

So we thought we’d put the answers together in this handy little post.

One of our favourite suggestions, which was actually one of our favourite themes last year involving the inclusion of funfair type events and theming at your wedding.

Anna, one of our Facebook fans said “I would hire fairground activities like hook a duck, coconut shy, candyfloss/popcorn cart type stuff. Maybe even a helter-skelter…”

Claire, another of our Facebook fans added “More fun things for our guests to do!” whilst Faye added “Less Worry About the Costs. So You can enjoy the build up to the Wedding as much as everyone else.”

Whilst Alex added “On photography n the church to make sure capture the best pictures to look at for rest of our lives and lots of props for pics xx”

Certainly it would seem from the answers that you are looking for fun things to add to your wedding, and it would seem that some of you are cutting the fun things in favor of tradition. Just remember a wedding is a party to celebrate the union of two people, so we highly recommend making it the biggest, best party ever!

Do keep a close eye on your budget, but don’t forget to make it fun – you want to remember it for being fun, and you certainly don’t want guests leaving early because its boring.

The big spend areas on your wedding day will be venue, entertainment and photography. All of these are really important to ensuring a great day, and don’t forget for a cheeky touch – a photo booth can come out of both the entertainment and photography budgets, so no excuse not to have the coolest wedding entertainment for your big day!

We’d love to hear your comments and know what you’d spend an extra £5,000 on for your big day, so drop us an e-mail or head over to our Facebook page.

photo credit: Christopher Chan via photopin cc

Here’s a clip…

Having just moved to a larger home and looking to increase their income, Pete and Celaine set about researching a new part time business. With a background in photography, Pete was drawn to a new craze emerging in the wedding industry, that of the party photo booth.

Attending a friend’s wedding in early summer 2012, Pete and Celaine came across Giggle Booth who were providing a photo booth for their friends. Joining in the fun, they had some photos taken themselves commenting on what a great idea it was. A week later at another friend’s wedding, they were surprised to see Giggle Booth again – and set about researching the company some more.

Pete recalls “I did some research on the internet into Giggle Booth and found out that they had recently started selling a franchise so I gave them a call to find out more. I had a few conversations with Dave Gillard, a founder of Giggle Booth and I was impressed with what their package offered after I read the pack that arrived with more details we were really interested”

After discussing the opportunity, Pete and Celaine decided it was right for them, the only thing stopping them was financing the start-up. Given the low initial investment, with the help of Giggle Booth finance partner Lloyds TSB and some support from their family, Pete and Celaine were soon able to realise their dream of running a photo booth business.

“It was tough to find the finance to enter in to this venture but with the support from family, the bank & Giggle Booth we got the finance to get started. It has been a far cheaper option to start a business as well as the fact that we have benefitted hugely from the technical expertise, the advertising and the branding that Giggle Booth have provided for us. We gain bookings through both them and ourselves so this has helped get our business of the ground running. They set up our websites, provided advertising material and helped to promote us”

With the finance secured, Pete and Celaine met with Giggle Booth co-founder Dave Gillard to sign the franchising agreements.  With everything in place, Pete and Celaine spent time with the Giggle Booth team being trained in running their photo booth business before taking delivery of their booth in August, and completing their first event within days.

The booth has been very popular, and the dynamic duo have completed a number of bookings within their territory. With their diary already 75% full for 2013, and having just completed their first major wedding exhibition, Pete and Celaine have high hopes for the business and are already considering their options to expand the business further.

“Business has been far busier than we expected at this early stage. We have just done our first big show at the Ricoh Arena in Coventry which had approximately 3,500 people through the doors and the number of people that came to see us and booked with us is a testament just to how popular Giggle Booth is (one couple travelled from Newcastle just to book with Giggle Booth). We would both recommend Giggle Booth as a great way to start your own business. It has been a whirlwind 6 months for us and we are looking forward to a busy 2013 and beyond”

Just 6 months in their business is already a roaring success and is set to only get better. Through the support of the Giggle Booth team, Pete and Celaine have created a part time business with a healthy turnover and excellent reputation.

You can find out more about hiring a photo booth from them by visiting their website at http://www.giggleboothwarwickshire.co.uk

To find out more about the Giggle Booth franchise visit the website at http://www.thephotoboothfranchise.co.uk or call 01202 798623 and ask for the franchise team.

About
Giggle Booth is a photo booth hire company which swept the company off its feet, and into a state of Giggles with its unique take on the party photo booth. In 2012 following huge interest in the brand, Giggle Booth set-up a photo booth franchise to expand its business further with the support of local people. The company now operates a number of branches across the country with a mix of company operated and franchised branches. With demand set to double in 2013/2014, the company are eager to attract new franchisees to achieve the same level of success as Pete and Celaine.

What a year 2012 has been! We have had the pleasure to work with some amazing people including some fantastic fellow wedding suppliers, amazing brides and grooms, super fun corporate and event companies and of course an amazing team here at Giggle Booth.

2012 started for us with a bang, with a number of weddings, parties and events booked in for our booths we had to ensure everything was in place for a fantastic year. In our workshop, we were hard at work developing a new line of Giggle Booths. Our older booth stock was starting to look tired and had no wow factor anymore. The ideas we had for the new booths involved the best of everything we had learnt about giving people a good time with a photobooth!

We started our wedding show year at the RICOH UK Wedding Show in Coventry where we were pleased to secure some fantastic bookings, two particular highlights of that weekend for me were getting to be next to Janice Hull Cakes (and her tasty treats!) and listening to the amazing and very talented The Acoustic.

A number of wedding shows followed, including the National Wedding Show in Olympia in February, and at the NEC in March. The National Wedding Show in March was to be where we really made Giggle Booth history, as it was here on Friday 16th March 2012 that we officially unveiled the new range of stylish photo booths! A true highlight from working both of the National Wedding Show events was working with our friends Shoot It Yourself.

Our exclusive new photo booths featured a high gloss white finish, elegant LED down lighting, upgraded software, external live feed, and fancy new benches! Looking like a modernised version of the traditional photo booth we were extremely happy to launch this new range which replaced all of our fleet in 2012. The launch at The National Wedding Show gave our new booths chance to really get broken in, and the booths were well received by all of the lovely couples we met as well as some other wedding professionals.

With the launch of the new booths now complete and wedding fayre season over, it was time to formally launch our photo booth franchise – allowing us to continue to grow and expand the Giggle Booth brand across the UK, Europe and the World.

May 2012 saw us nominated for The Wedding Industry Awards.

In June 2012 we further expanded as our original office space in Bournemouth became to small to store our growing collection of Giggle Booths, with this in mind we moved to new premises in Hampshire with the opening of a new photo booth manufacturing and storage facility.

Soon after announcing the launch of the photobooth franchise we met with a wonderful couple, Pete and Celaine from Rubgy. They loved our booths, and they loved everything about

Giggle Booth (who wouldn’t). Following a number of meetings and late night phone calls, in July 2012 we signed the agreements which led to the opening of our Warwickshire and West Midlands branches which officially launched in August 2012. You can read the official announcement here, and Pete and Celaine’s take on things here.

Personally, this was a very proud moment for me as the company that I live and breath was growing. I was even happier, as Pete and Celaine proved very quickly that they were exactly the right sort of people to be running a branch for us. Genuinely they are kind people, but they are also very fun, and warm people – I couldn’t be happier with them as our first franchisees and love the relationship I have been able to build with them as we have grown the branch over the last 6 months.

The summer proved to be extremely busy, and I am really pleased and proud with the dedication shown by the entire Giggle Booth team throughout the summer season where we captured over a million images, and had some amazing Giggle’s! We received some lovely photo booth reviews from couples who had employed our wedding photo booth hire service.

In October we returned to The National Wedding Show working with some wonderful people including the very talented Chloe Jean who is one of the most talented wedding singers I have had the pleasure to listen to. Capturing a number of photos and working with some great fellow wedding suppliers it was great to be a part of the show again. October also saw us nominated for the Wedding Ideas Magazine Awards.

November saw further meetings with potential franchisees which resulted in the fantastic announcement we were able to make on 5th December 2012 when Justine and Leah joined our team to head up Hampshire and Surrey. Their branch is due to open in early 2013. Justine and Leah are just as lovely as Pete and Celaine, we just know our customers in Hampshire and Surrey will love them.

December proved to be a very busy month hosting a number of Christmas parties, weddings, engagement parties and birthdays. We even managed to have a couple of celebrity customers to top off the year. One of the highlights of December was hosting the wedding of Kelly and Chris, who had a spectacular winter wonderland wedding with a number of delicate touches. Kelly has been a very loyal and supportive customer throughout the year and we worked with her to theme the booth with a winter themed Green Screen and prints. The booth was a huge success, and having personally attended this event with Booth Butler Nicky, I was very impressed with all of the lovely touches that made my last wedding of the year so memorable.  A picture from Kelly and Chris’ day is shown to the left featuring the photo booth green screen we provided on the night.

One of the highlights of this year for me, has been being able to take sometime out to spend time with my loyal, supportive and amazing other half Lauren, particularly as having focused on helping plan others weddings for the last couple of years we decided that we should probably get around to planning our own especially as this year we proudly celebrated our 7th year together. Those of you who have met Lauren (she helps out at Giggle HQ occasionally and often attends our major wedding shows) will know that she has dreamt of our wedding day for a long time, and has become somewhat of an expert on wedding planning given the time it has taken me to pluck up the courage to ask her to marry me, which I did on Christmas Day this year. We are really looking forward to ‘tying the knot’ in 2014 and I’m really looking forward to being on the other side of the planning.

This year we have helped many brides and grooms celebrate their weddings, hosted photo booths for corporate events and birthday parties – captured millions of photos and produced hundreds of memory books – it has been a fantastic year, and on behalf of everyone at Giggle Booth – thank you so much for your support. Whether you have hired from us this year, liked our Facebook page, interacted with us on Twitter or just read our blogs in doing so you have shown us support and I am so grateful to everyone who has shown us support this year, we understand that without you we are nothing so please keep supporting us throughout 2013.

So that’s my review of 2012, what a year (and I’m sure I’ve missed most of it out of this blog!) – special thanks to the entire Giggle Booth team who work tirelessly to make our attendance at events a success, and to customers past, present and future.

As a special thank you and a warm introduction to 2013, we will have a one week sale on event photos, and photo booth add-ons from 7th-14th January 2013 – look out for further details on this blog and our Facebook page.

Looking forward to 2013, don’t forget to catch myself, Pete, Celaine and some friendly faces from Giggle Booth Warwickshire in January at the UK Wedding Shows at RICOH on the 12th and 13th January , followed by the launch of our Hampshire & Surrey branch on 14th January, shortly after a feature on Sky TV about Giggle Booth and news about other branch openings, new software and some other amazing developments – its going to be one busy, amazing year – Happy New Year!

Dave

PS: Don’t forget you can also now follow me on Twitter @DaveGiggle

A Giggle Booth, Booth Butler is a friendly attendant who will help to ensure your photo booth hire is a roaring success. The Booth Butlers job starts when they arrive at one of our Giggle Booth depots to collect the equipment to be used at your event. Once they have tested and loaded the equipment they set-off on their journey to arrive at your venue  (normally around an hour before the intended start time) where they will unload and set-up your photo booth.

Once they have assembled the booth, they will set about running some tests to ensure absolutely everything is perfect. When everything is ready, they will open the photo booth for your guests to enjoy and remain on hand throughout the night to help guests in and out of the booth, ensure no one hogs the booth, operate the guest book if ordered and generally be around to help.

All of our Booth Butlers are fully trained and are also supported by an on-call Event Manager.

When hiring a photo booth it is vital that unlimited photos are included. Unfortunately some photo booth hire companies operate a limited photo service which is normally tucked away in the small print. Like many things, here at Giggle Booth we like to have fun and love nothing more than to hear the sound of people enjoying our booths, which is why unlike some all of our packages include unlimited photo sessions.

Unlimited photos allow your guests to visit the booth as many times as possible for the duration of the hire of your Giggle Booth. This means that your guests aren’t limited to just visiting the photo booth once, but can re-visit many times.

Unlimited photos shouldn’t be confused with unlimited prints which is the number of copies produced from each visit. We do offer an unlimited prints service but find that this normally results in fewer photos being taken.

Then came September, which ended up being even busier than August. We had barely caught our breath when all of a sudden it was October and time for our annual appearance at The National Wedding Show.

So we set off to the NEC with our van overloaded with the 2 photo booths which were to be the stars of the show, a heap of props, furniture, stationery, posters, leaflets, etc. We took over 1000 photos, took bookings from some great new customers and met with some fantastic wedding suppliers – the show was, as always, great fun!

Traditionally November has been a fairly quiet month, but not this year, if there was ever a sign that November was becoming more popular for weddings and that the photo booth industry was still in super growth – looking over our booking calendar confirms both of these things!

Until next time…

Dave

We are almost half way through a fantastically busy month, and are having lots of fun entertaining guests and capturing memories for the most amazing brides and grooms.

Next week, our Warwickshire & West Midlands branches launch, offering a localised Giggle Booth service across the 2 counties.

We’ve recently given our packages yet another spruce up, making them absolutely the most inclusive package available in the UK.

Aside from that, we’ve welcomed a couple of new faces to the team who will be helping us ensure complete customer satisfaction and Giggles at all times! So welcome to Melanie, Jess and Maggie who have joined our head office staff; and to our new booth butlers James, Joe and Dan.

Our new IT manager is working hard on a fantastic bunch of upgrades which we hope to be releasing on the booths from the end of this month, and we’ve been working on extra personalisation options for your hire too.

All in all, a very busy month, made even better last week when the final space available for the month was booked.

We still have some spaces for Christmas parties and a couple of booths still available for New Years Eve, we advise booking as early as possible to secure the best prices and availability.

So that’s what we’ve been up to, what a great month – we LOVE what we do!

Dave

Crazy Couple Have A Giggle… And Become New Owners Of Warwickshire & West Midlands Branches

GIGGLE BOOTH CONTINUES TO EXPAND UK PHOTO BOOTH OPERATIONS WITH 2 NEW FRANCHISED AREAS

Pete and Celaine Cave of Rugby have joined team Giggle Booth through the companies photo booth franchise system which was launched in April this year.

There’s a new business in town on a mission to make weddings and parties in the Warwickshire and West Midlands areas more memorable and fun. Locally based couple Pete and Celaine Cave are launching their new Giggle Booth franchise across the counties on 20^th August 2012.

Giggle Booth Managing Director, Dave Gillard said of the new franchise “Pete and Celaine are really friendly people, we all hit it off straight away and I could immediately see that Pete and Celaine would be ideal candidates to run a Giggle Booth franchise”.

Giggle Booth has been operating across England and Wales since 2010, and was one of the original companies to start offering photo booth services for weddings and parties – which allow newly married couples the opportunity to entertain their guests and collect a book of memories and messages featuring photos captured within the stylish booths the company operates. The company has grown at a tremendous rate despite starting through recessionary times, and this year launched a brand new version of their popular photo booths at The National Wedding Show in March at the NEC.

Pete and Celaine from Rugby have taken on both the Warwickshire and West Midlands territories, “We love everything about the Giggle Booth brand and how unique the booths are, we’ve had so much fun ‘testing’ them out and can’t wait to get started offering services to local brides and grooms” Pete said of his new business.

The couple will be supported by the Giggle Booth head office team based in Dorset, and will be undertaking some training at the companies head office in August.  Local couples can meet Pete and Celaine at a number of local wedding fairs taking place throughout the rest of the year, more information about Giggle Booth can be found at www.gigglebooth.co.uk