As mobile technology continues to become more powerful and accessible, it can provide great opportunities to enhance, share and remember your wedding day. With that easy access though comes the danger of going overboard when it comes to technical bells and whistles. Before adding any technical flair to your wedding, there are a few things to keep in mind:
Be Prepared
It's bad enough playing tech support for your parents when you go home to visit so you definitely don't want to be figuring out Wifi issues on your wedding day. If you need to have a Facetime stream of the ceremony so that Uncle Mike can watch live from Hawaii, that's a great use of ready-to-go technology that would have seemed like something from The Jetsons a few years ago. However, make sure that you test everything out well in advance of the big day so that there are no surprises. Beyond even testing everything out, delegate and make these kinds of things the responsibility of someone else. This temporary IT person should be someone who you trust to get it done, who won't bother you with details and isn't heavily involved in the rest of the wedding (i.e. no groomsmen). These hightech add-ons are generally nice to haves so give someone their marching orders and forget about it.
Decide What's Appropriate
The safest thinking is that your wedding day is all about you so everything else should take a
backseat. You don't want anything to take the focus off of the bride, but it's up to you to decide
what you're comfortable with and what's a good reflection of your personality and lifestyle.
If you're an engineer at Google marrying a designer from Facebook and you live and breathe
everything online then maybe it's OK for the best man to wear a Google Glass headset to
document the big day. If, however, you're getting married at the old money country club that your family has belonged to for 100 years, you'll probably need to tone things down a bit. That said, you can still livestream the ceremony, just make sure that it's from an iPad that's hidden behind some flowers and guaranteed not to distract.
Also, decide what's appropriate for the varying demographics that comprise your guest list. You
may want to orchestrate every aspect of your wedding from your laptop, but grandma is
probably still looking for that intricate invitation in the mail instead of an Evite.
Have a Goal in Mind
Finally, it's important to keep in mind that any technology you introduce to your wedding has to
serve a purpose. Do you want to capture lots of photos from guests? Try a photo gathering service like HitchedPic. Do you want to share the event live with remote guests who can't make
it? You've got lots of choices like Facetime, Google Hangouts and Skype. Your wedding is
completely up to you so feel free to go nuts with techie touches if they serve a need and fit your
personality. Just because your best friend had a Makerbot printing the icing on their cake doesn't mean that you have to. But seriously, if you have a Makerbot printing the cake at your wedding, I'd like to come or at least see a picture.