In two weeks, I get married. And in two weeks, for the very first time, real people who are not me will walk up to these games and play them.
I have written on this blog about designing the games, testing them at kitchen tables, and building the cabinets they live inside. What I have not had yet is the thing every one of those posts was quietly building toward: a real wedding, with real guests, and the machines actually in the room. That happens at my own reception. It is the first real-world deployment of anything I have made — and I wanted to write down exactly where things stand before it happens, honestly, while I still do not know how it goes.
Why My Own Wedding, Specifically
This company started because I wanted a custom arcade game for my own wedding. Not as a business plan — just as a thing I wished existed. I am a designer and a maker, I have built games before, and I could not shake the idea of a full-size cabinet with a game starring the two of us that our guests could actually play. So I started building one. Somewhere in that process it turned into something bigger, and I realized other couples would want the same thing.
But the origin never changed. The first game was always going to debut at the wedding it was made for. There is something fitting about that, and something a little terrifying about it too. The best possible test of whether wedding arcade games belong at weddings is to put them at one that matters enormously to me, in front of the people whose opinions I care about most.
Honeymoon Hustle — the game that started all of this, now two weeks from its first real audience
What Is Actually Going to Be There
Let me be precise, because vague promises are how this blog used to get itself in trouble. At the wedding there will be:
- ✓ Two arcade cabinets — Honeymoon Hustle, the two-player lane runner starring the couple, and Ring Run, the maze chase. Both cabinets are partially built right now, and getting them finished in time is the entire focus of my nights and weekends.
- ✓ One Hear Hear Modern audio guestbook — the fully wireless, vintage-style phone that guests pick up to leave a recorded message.
That is the whole lineup. No booths, no extras I have not actually finished. Two games and a phone — the things that are real and ready enough to stand in front of a crowd.
The State of Things, Honestly
The cabinets are the nail-biter. Both are partway there. The software is in good shape — Ring Run especially — but a cabinet is wood and buttons and wiring and a screen, and all of that has to come together and hold together in a room full of people in formalwear. One of the two cabinets was built more conventionally; the other I have been designing toward flat-pack, which is the harder path and the reason it has taken longer. Whether that second one is truly there in time is the open question I am living with right now.
The Hear Hear Modern is in better shape. The hardware is verified and the audio is clean; what I am fussing over is the industrial design of the phone itself, the look and feel of the thing guests will hold. That is a good problem to have — refinement, not "does it work."
So this is not a victory-lap post. It is a two-weeks-out, still-in-the-shop, hope-the-glue-dries post. That is where I actually am.
What I Am Nervous About
Plenty. Will a guest who has never touched a joystick pick it up in five seconds like my testing suggested, or will the reception energy be different from a friend's living room? Will the cabinets survive being moved into a venue and set up? Will the thing I have pictured in my head for months actually land the way I imagine when there is a real crowd and a real open bar and real distraction pulling in every direction?
I do not know. That is the honest answer, and it is also the entire point of doing it. Every assumption I have made gets tested at once. Some of them will be wrong. The plan is to write down what I learn — the wins, the failures, the things I did not see coming — and share it here afterward.
Come Back for the Aftermath
The next post in this thread will be the one I am most looking forward to and most anxious about: what actually happened. Real photos, real reactions, real lessons — the first honest report from a wedding where these games were on the floor.
If you want to follow the story as it unfolds, this blog is where it lives. And if you are planning your own wedding and the idea of custom arcade games speaks to you, take a look at the product lineup or reach out through the contact page. In two weeks I stop guessing and start finding out. I will let you know how it goes.