Have your gamer guests track their achievements

Related Post Dean & Matt's classy “gaymer's crash a gastropub” wedding

Retro video game photo booth props, a Mario cake, Plants Vs. Zombies cupcakes, and a chic gastropub in New York City... it's a GAYmer wedding... Read more

Remember Dean & Matt's classy “gaymer's crash a gastropub” wedding? Of course you do. You all loved it.

Well, the boys came up with the perfect addition to a “gaymer” wedding — a custom game to play!

Ready to help your gusts unlock some achievements?

We had achievements, too! On the back of each program was a list of achievements inspired by video games (called things like “Blood Moon” or “Rucks” or “To Our Hometowns”). We had a big chalkboard explaining what each was, and a custom stamp for people to stamp their program when they finished. I think we had about 25 achievements, and some guests did 15, which is WAY more than I was expecting.

It was also a fun way to include non-participants. My parents kept wondering why everyone asked to dance with them (for the achievement “Waltz for the Moon”), and I saw multiple instances of people being dragged to the photo booth because “we just need one more person” (for the achievement “Pokemon Snap”).

If you're desperate for more details, you're in luck, because Dean posted all the details over on Reddit:

We knew we wanted to do achievements as they show up in various video games – random tasks which you can do, check a box, and get absolutely no reward for other than bragging rights. First, we came up with a bunch of achievements:

• Try each of the seven hors d'oeuvres
• Try each of the three cupcakes
• Taste each of the beers
• Try a health potion cocktail
• Try a mana potion cocktail
• Dance with each of the groomspeople
• Dance with a groom's parent
• Engage in a Zumba(tm) booty-off or choreographed Bhangra routine
• Take a photobooth photo with 5 people
• Wear every hat in different photobooth pictures
• Upload a picture to Facebook while at the wedding
• Take a picture with one of the readers
• Take a picture of the Manhattan or Brooklyn Bridge
• Sign the guest poster
• Call one of your relatives and tell them you love them

We then assigned them clever-ish names, again taking our cues from video games. So our chalkboard had a list like this:

• Blood Moon: Attend the afterparty
• To Our Hometowns: Have some prosecco during the toasts
• Rucks: Hug someone you just met today

The names make reference to some of our favorite games (in these 3 examples, Terraria, Final Fantasy 6, and Bastion), but people didn't need to know the reference to know what to do. In fact, most people who went gangbusters on the achievements were not gamers by a long shot.

Then on the back of the program (pictured above), we printed the name of the achievement with a little box to check. We also ordered a custom stamp with our initials – there are stores on etsy that do this sort of thing for about $20. As you can see from the picture, we got our stamp a little too big. Most people resorted to checkmarks with pens, and this friend ended up writing clues to remind her what to do on her card, so she didn't have to keep consulting the chalkboard.

That was it! People handled the rest on their own. Some got really into it – racking up about 15-20 of the achievements. Others took one or two to heart. A couple decided that “taste each beer” meant “drink an entire beer” of the ten different beers we had on tap! They had a very fun night 😉

I definitely wouldn't expect most guests to do them. I think maybe 10-15% of ours actively tried to do these, but it definitely gets other non-participants involved in the wedding. My parents were also extremely confused as to why people kept trying to dance with them, and I often saw individuals getting dragged to the photobooth to shouts of “BUT WE NEED ANOTHER PERSON.”

Final note, a group of 4 friends were trying to do the “wear all of the hats” achievements as efficiently as possible. There were 5 hats. So in one strip of four pictures, they keep rotating the hats, which left one hat, leading to the best photobooth strip of the night.

If you love this, be sure to revisit their wedding profile!

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