We’ve seen some amazing videos and slideshows at wedding receptions. Usually set to music, they walk wedding guests through the lives of the bride and groom from childhood right up to the wedding day. But if you’ve ever put together a slideshow, you know it can be time consuming! And it’s not always easy to find or ask family and friends to e-mail/scan photos.

The other day we came across LiveShare.com. It seemed too good to be true – so we decided to check it out. LiveShare allows you to compile one collective photo album with family and friends leading up to your wedding reception. You can project your album during the wedding reception as a slide show AND (and this is a BIG AND) your guests can add photos they take during the reception to the stream right from their smartphones! It’s like disposable cameras on the tables meets instagr.am!

Here’s How You Can Create a Custom Photo Slideshow!

Basically, what you’ll set up is one giant photo album that looks like the screenshot below. You can use it for a slideshow featuring photos of your childhood, to broadcast photos from your wedding ceremony or reception in real time to family and friends who can not attend, or even to collect photos from your wedding guests after the event for your album.

This is what your photo stream looks like using the livestream website

To get started, you need to create a free account using your Facebook account.

Next, you create your own photo stream. Give it a name, and decide what privacy setting you would like to use. For security, we recommend a private stream, but we noticed that it’s much easier to share the album with your guests when you choose public via a simple URL. It’s up to you.

Choose to make your stream public or private.

You can then share the public link/URL with friends and family, or choose the private stream and enter the e-mail addresses of all the guests you would like to be able to view and add to your stream. When you use the private setting and e-mail invitations, your guests receive the e-mail below.

Guests may need additional instructions.

We recommend that you send your guests some additional instructions, or put the details on your wedding website to ensure everyone knows what to do. You might want your guests to:

1. Add photos from your childhood, or photos of you and your husband to the stream in advance of the wedding
2. Download the mobile app for their phone in order to contribute photos during the event.

Currently the mobile app is available for the iPhone, android and windows7 phones. No blackberry yet!

Guests can take photos and upload to the stream straight from their smart phone.

Currently available for iPhone, Android and Windows7 phones.

Setting Up the Slide Show – What You’ll Need:

In order to show the photos at your reception, you’ll need a few things:

• computer
• internet connection
• projector
• white wall or screen to project the images on in a dimly lit area
• proper cords to connect the computer to projector (different for each computer)

Also, because this service is new, you’ll need to e-mail the team at LiveShare.com (liveshare@cooliris.com) for your own personal URL/webpage that will play your slide show.

New Features Coming Soon!

Apparently there are new features coming all the time… however, if you’re listening, LiveShare, here are a few features we’d like to request:

• Mobile app for blackberry – a lot of our friends are business types!
• Not to have to use our facebook account. Not everyone we’re friends with on facebook is invited to the wedding and we don’t want you publishing things to our wall
• To be able to give a URL with the private stream option rather than inviting by e-mail
• Build the live slideshow URL right into our account so we don’t have to e-mail you