How to broadcast your wedding live on the web — Part 2 of 4

OBT member Ang (check out the new Ang avatar since she became a married lady!) is back with part two of her helpful "how to" on streaming your wedding in the internets. (See part one here.) Again, this is the perfect way to include the people who can't be at your wedding, as well as a way to let all your OBB friends share in the live action wedding porn! (Sounds dirty don't it?)  -Megan

Alright so we're using Ustream because it's got lots of cool gadgets and it's FREE!

STEP ONE:

When you first get to U Stream you need to sign up. Ala this…

STEP TWO:

Put in all your info. I made this account just for you! And the birthday stuff is just to make sure you're old enough to use it, and if you forget your password.

STEP THREE:

Enter your profile info so that people can find you. For realism, I used my legal name…

STEP FOUR:

So now we're going to name your broadcast. You'll only need one broadcast, so name it whatever you want. I went kind of generic with this one. You have two options — to save the show or start broadcasting. We aren't going to broadcast quite yet, because we want to customize it first. So click on "Save My Show".

STEP FIVE:

That brings you to the settings for your show! This is how we make it pretty and let people find it.

• Name your show (I know this is redundant, but just go with it).
• Choose a logo.

I made this one up (again, just for you, because you're so special!) This part is kind of annoying because there's no perfect size for it. If it's perfect for your idle screen it'll get chopped off on your avatar, and perfect for your avatar and you'll get lines on your idle screen. I made this one 400x400 pixels.

• Choose a category. This is so people can browse categories and stumble across something that interests them. Since it's immensely unlikely that random people will want to watch your wedding (unless they're into that voyeur thing) it doesn't matter what you put them under. In my case I put it under "Events" and "Family".
• Choose your tags, it's so people who are specifically looking for your wedding can find you. Put your name, your honey's name, the name of the town, the venue, whatever you can think of. And separate everything with a comma. So instead of doing: Jane Smith, Joe Schmo, you would do Jane, Smith, Joe, Schmo. That's so if people don't do it exactly right there's still a chance they'll find you.
• Add your discription, that part's pretty self explanatory.
• REMEMBER TO CLICK SAVE NOW OR YOU'LL LOSE IT!

STEP SIX:

This is the design tab. 'Tis uber fun. Note, if you upload a background picture, you have to leave your background color. No touchy! As for the colors, if you have certain colors and know your codes, you can type CMYK, RGB and HEX codes in manually and get a perfect match. Otherwise click on the color and it opens up the color pallet. To adjust the slider on the right, hover over it and the arrow will change to a double ended arrow. Click and drag it up and down to change your hue.

When you're done, click on the "Preview" button to see what it looks like.

STEP SEVEN:

TA DAHHHHH. This is your first view of your new page! There are lots of gadgets that we'll get to later, but for now, bask in the glory of teh cute!

Now you can make any changes you want or if you're happy with it click "Save Now".

STEP EIGHT:

The other tabs we aren't going to work on right now, but I'll explain them…

• The "Off air clips" are things that people can view when your stream isn't going. If you do this for say, your bachelorette party, you can record it, and have it up for people to watch while they wait for your ceremony to start. Although if your Bachelorette party was any good you probably don't want to do that…
• "Share" is a list of the eleventy billion links you can use to get people to your page. If you have a wed site you can embed the video right there.
• The "Advanced" tab is mostly for chat rules and access. So you'd use it if you wanted people to log on with a password, Twitter tags, if you want a Mod for chat, and the Flash Encoder (which we'll deal with later). Right now we're going to leave that alone.
• This brings us to the schedule. Now the schedule is cool because people can RSVP, and you can see who's planning on watching, PLUS it'll email a reminder to your guests!
• Make sure you click "Create" at the bottom or the Event won't go through.

And for all those who want to see the marvelous creation thus far, here's the link!

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/bunny-and-lumpkins-wedding

Next time I'll show you the chat, Facebook, and Twitter options, and then the GOOD stuff!