You can see the day. You cannot hear it.
Photographs record what a day looked like. An audio guestbook records what the people sounded like: their voices, their stories, the pause before the honest bit. It runs on the phone already in their pocket.
Included on every event, with nothing to hire. £34.99 one-off.
Incoming
Anna & Luke
Audio guestbook
It rings. That is the whole design decision.
Why a voice and not another photograph
This is a different medium, not another feature. It is worth having for reasons a photograph cannot cover.
A photograph shows the room. A voice shows the person.
You can see from a photograph that somebody was laughing. You cannot hear what they said. Tone, accent, the pause before they say the honest thing: none of that survives a picture.
People say things out loud they would never write
Handed a pen, most people write "congratulations" and their name. Given sixty seconds and a question, the same person tells a story about you that nobody else in the room knew.
It ages differently
Photographs of a day get looked at for a fortnight and then rarely. Recordings of people get played back years later, and for the ones who are no longer here they are the only copy of that voice anybody has.
What a guest actually experiences
Five beats, built as a phone call rather than a form. The whole thing takes about ninety seconds.
They scan, and it rings
They point the camera at your code and it opens in whatever browser is already on their phone. Nothing to install, no account, no sign-in, on iPhone or Android. Then it rings: not a form, not an upload box, a call. That single decision is why people use it.
They hear you
The greeting is one you recorded. The first thing a guest hears is somebody they know asking them, in your voice, which is a different request from a screen asking them.
They are asked something
One of your questions, chosen at random. Nobody has to invent a message on the spot, and no two people answer the same thing.
They talk
Up to 60 seconds. Long enough to say something true and short enough that they finish. They can listen back and go again.
It lands in the album
Beside the photographs and the video, attributed to whoever left it.
“What is your best memory of them?”
0:34 of 60
The photographs and the voices, in one album.
Create your eventFree for your first 10 uploads, then £34.99 one-off.
Voice messages · 34
Grandma Alice0:52 Uncle Ray0:41 Priya0:34 The Nichols1:00What you end up with
The half a feature list never covers: not what it does, but what is sitting there on the Monday.
A list of voices, not a folder of files
Each message sits under the name the person gave, in the same album as everything else from the day.
The ones you never expected
The people who would never write in a paper guestbook are the ones who talk. Older relatives, children, the friend who left early.
Yours to keep and to download
Downloaded with the rest of the album, so the recordings live wherever you keep the photographs rather than inside somebody else’s service.
When it is worth having
It suits some occasions more than others, and it is worth saying which.
At a wedding
The messages arrive late, from people who have stopped being shy. A photograph of your uncle at midnight tells you he was there. A minute of him tells you what he thinks of you, which he would never have written down at the table.
Read moreAt a birthday or an anniversary
A round number brings people who travelled and who you see once a decade. Their voices date the night in a way a photograph does not: you can hear how old everybody was.
Read moreAt a memorial
This is the occasion where it stops being an extra. Photographs of somebody are everywhere. Recordings of the people who knew them, saying what they were like, are the thing nobody thinks to make until it is too late to make it.
Read more
Against the hired telephone
The usual way to do this is to hire a converted rotary phone for the weekend. It looks wonderful on a table, and it costs a few hundred pounds before collection and return.
It also records one person at a time, wherever it happens to be plugged in, which means the queue is the limit and the people at the other end of the room never get to it. This runs on every phone in the room at once, it is included rather than hired, and there is nothing to send back on the Monday.
What the hired phone has that this does not is the object itself sitting on the table. That is a real charm and it is worth knowing you are giving it up.
Questions, answered
What is an audio guestbook?
An audio guestbook records spoken messages from your guests instead of written ones. Where a paper guestbook gets a name and a line, an audio one gets somebody’s voice, which is the part people play back years later. PixelParty’s runs on the phone in their pocket rather than on a hired handset.
Do we need to hire a phone?
No. That is the usual way to do this and it costs a few hundred pounds for the weekend, plus collection and return. Here it is a switch on your event, included in the price, and guests use their own phones.
How long can a message be?
Up to 60 seconds. The cap is deliberate: it is long enough to say something real and short enough that people finish, and it keeps the messages worth listening to all the way through.
Can we record our own greeting?
Yes, and you should. Guests hear it before they are asked to speak, and a greeting in a voice they recognise is the difference between people leaving a message and hanging up.
Can we choose what guests are asked?
Yes. You write the prompts and each guest gets one at random, so you get a spread of answers rather than fifty people saying congratulations.
Where do the messages end up?
In the same album as the photos and video, attributed to whoever left them, and downloadable with everything else.
Is it included or an extra?
Included. There is no feature tier here: every event can turn the audio guestbook on, from £34.99 once.
Keep the voices, not just the pictures
Record your greeting, write a few questions, and let people talk.
Create your eventFree for your first 10 uploads. No card needed.