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How I Used Twilio, Python and Google to Automate My Wedding

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Re: How I Used Twilio, Python and Google to Automate My Wedding

#151

Post by Veen »

tootie wrote: post #99
iblaine wrote: post #10

Physical wedding invitations are still tradition such that people may get offended if they do not get one in the mail.

I personally abhor empty formality. I got married 10+ years ago and can't for the life of me remember what we did for invitations and I doubt anyone who came remembers either. I remember the food pretty well because it was great. We did a chocolate cake (black forest) which people still remember.

I think it's useful to differentiate between empty formality and an effort to raise an occasion above the humdrum of normal existence with rituals and behaviors that connote its specialness.

The formality isn't empty in the sense that it's purposeless: it's done for a reason.

After all, marriage itself could be considered an empty formality, so if you're going to bother getting married you might as well embrace the formalized aspects of the occasion.

Re: How I Used Twilio, Python and Google to Automate My Wedding

#152

Post by Steeeve »

mixmastamyk wrote: post #131
Steeeve wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was in a museum the other day when a guy asked his girlfriend how she would feel about a non-diamond engagement ring. Her reaction was hysterical, and a good laugh was had by about 20 other people. Not likely they are going to be a thing too much longer.

Hysterical but not worth mentioning, eh?

Sorry... I don't know how to put it into words. There was an immediate pause felt by everyone within earshot, including her. You could tell she was deciding whether the pressure of being in a public social atmosphere was enough to get her to go forever diamond-less. Then the sense of frustration and being offended took over. There was a shriek. There were animated movements. There were at least 7 different facial expressions ranging from anger to flabbergasted to vengeful to mad scientist. There was a very firm "No!" There were some other more colorful words. She stomped off. He followed like a puppy with a tail between his legs. The crowd laughed. Sorry... I'm not really good at this.

Re: How I Used Twilio, Python and Google to Automate My Wedding

#153

Post by Slamchunk »

Author here.

Weddings are time sinks even small ones like mine, we viewed around 20 venues for example, multiple caterers etc. Anything you can do to save time is a good thing. Handwriting invitations, making 500 paper cranes by hand all are lovely gestures but we focussed on what was important to us - food! For example saved a bunch from ditching traditional wedding invites and table favors (we did have amazing flowers for the tables) that we could then reallocated to having the best food and wine for our guests.

Plus it may sound strange but we don't have all of our friends postal addresses noted down, so mailing out invites would have been even more cumbersome.

Re: How I Used Twilio, Python and Google to Automate My Wedding

#155

Post by upbeatlinux »

Hmm, not entirely sure I would title this wedding at scale. It does seem like a fairly standard wedding size. Great homebrew solution though.

I did something similar in 2009 with a custom Wordpress plugin. However, guests were imported from a CSV of our Google Sheet guest list as Wordpress users. Each guest was automatically assigned a randomly generated dinner code. The code was included in the wedding invite card as we wanted to be fairly traditional.

When a guest confirmed they received an email with custom directions from their home address and a printable parking pass. Guests could cancel up to two weeks before the event at which time an email was sent to the caterer. The plugin also generated email reminders 7, 2, and 1 day prior with the same links.

Two weeks prior to our wedding the guest food selections were compiled and sent directly to the caterer for final numbers. Seating charts and name cards with food selections were also printed using the WP database and PDF templates via pdftk.

Guest who provided email addresses were sent photos from the event via Picasa Web Albums 3 weeks after the event.

While this is much lighter weight and as others have expressed fairly impersonal the grooms family and bride probably knew this.

Kudos on a quick and fun implementation! In retrospect I wish I had use Twilio ;)

Re: How I Used Twilio, Python and Google to Automate My Wedding

#157

Post by xgbi »

lpa22 wrote: post #132
andrewguenther wrote: post #23

In my opinion, this makes the whole process very impersonal. I invited people to my wedding because I care about them and wanted them to share that day with me. Although it was a lot of effort, I was happy to make save the dates, invitations, and hand write thank you notes to every singe one of them. If you're not willing to do that, then you're inviting too many people in my opinion.

I felt very similarly for my first 3 weddings. But I finally let go and automated my 4th, and I think everyone appreciated it.

There's a WaaS (Wedding-as-a-service) opportunity right there.

Re: How I Used Twilio, Python and Google to Automate My Wedding

#158

Post by n4r9 »

Slamchunk wrote: post #153

Author here. Weddings are time sinks even small ones like mine, we viewed around 20 venues for example, multiple caterers etc. Anything you can do to save time is a good thing. Handwriting invitations, making 500 paper cranes by hand all are lovely gestures but we focussed on what was important to us - food! For example saved a bunch from ditching traditional wedding invites and table favors (we did have amazing flow…

We did something similar for our wedding, except that I skipped SMS and used Google forms and sheets for all the organisation. I don't think we actually had the mobile numbers of all our guests... even some of the email addresses had to be pre-procured. My wife and I could keep track of things just by going to our Google drives, and I didn't feel the need to write any scripts. In your opinion, what was the main advantage of using SMS? Was it the part about keeping up to date on rsvp stats?

Re: How I Used Twilio, Python and Google to Automate My Wedding

#159

Post by Slamchunk »

n4r9 wrote: post #158
Slamchunk wrote: post #153

Author here. Weddings are time sinks even small ones like mine, we viewed around 20 venues for example, multiple caterers etc. Anything you can do to save time is a good thing. Handwriting invitations, making 500 paper cranes by hand all are lovely gestures but we focussed on what was important to us - food! For example saved a bunch from ditching traditional wedding invites and table favors (we did have amazing flow…

We did something similar for our wedding, except that I skipped SMS and used Google forms and sheets for all the organisation. I don't think we actually had the mobile numbers of all our guests... even some of the email addresses had to be pre-procured. My wife and I could keep track of things just by going to our Google drives, and I didn't feel the need to write any scripts. In your opinion, what was the main advan…

Speed of confirmation, stats were useful as a show off feature. I had considered using email but as with postal I didn't have everyones address (can't actually think of the last time I emailed friends), we had around 90% of peoples telephone numbers and so it became the logical mode of communication for this project.

I had thought about a phone call out with a prerecorded message to our guests and then collect their input via dtmf ;) But SMS was the easiest method for our needs, but it depends on what networks your guests use I guess.

I've seen many of my friends get married and it can be so expensive (tens of thousands) and for a single day!

Re: How I Used Twilio, Python and Google to Automate My Wedding

#160

Post by funnyfacts365 »

froindt wrote: post #113
odbol_ wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could even get a little blue "verified" checkmark next to your name after you pass an STD test.

Holy shit this is a startup idea! Who is in?

In? In jail, you mean?
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