The 3rd annual Racked Awards 2013

This was my vision by the end of the night at the 2013 Racked Awards celebrated at the Heath inside the McKittrick hotel. Alright, I didn't drink thaaat much but those cocktails were pretty strong...except the punch which was so good! The winners of the 2013 Racked Awards were announced earlier in the day and could claim their golden turbans at the party. 

Just to mention a few winners voted by Racked readers:

Best New Store-Personnel of New York (which I personally want to check out!)

Best Sample sale went to 'Comme des Garçon'. (That's where I got my Tretorn sneakers for $20.)

Best New Home Goods Store-Jung Lee. (Another store I want to check out.)

Best French Import- Maison Kitsuné (It's a nice store!)

Best Online Goes Offline- Warby Parker. (I have a pair!)

The Racked Awards golden turbans!

The Heathens played up some great tunes! Oldies, classics and new songs!

3 choices of Tito vodka's handmade cocktails (with fresh ingredients, simple syrups and everything!) were being concocted at the bar. We tried all 3 cocktails as you can see.

photo by Kenneth Bachor 

A party is not complete without a photobooth! There was one set up called Rotobooth inside this mini model train cart! (I need to return to the Heath one day!) Rotobooth lets you use a rotary dial to enter your cellphone number so you can get a text with the link to your 4 pictures! It is a pretty neat idea but freakin' takes forever to dial when you're slightly buzzed which the booth attendant said, guests often are! I'm 30 so I did have a rotary dial phone at home when I was young but I thought, for the younger kids, they must think it is such an ancient but novel idea! 

And right after you finish dialing, you have to step back and get ready immediately for the shot or else you will look like this...

The I Am Not Ready Yet look

But then you get the hang of it and look like this...professional synchronized photobooth takers. 

Fobby Asian pose

We took 12 different poses

Live band, free drinks, a psychic reader and photobooth! More pictures of the party here! Thank you Racked for an awesome party!

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I love me a good wedding photo booth! [Magnolia photo booth] #hsinianddavid

Magnolia photobooth Co. #hsinianddavid

I was so happy to have had Magnolia photo booth at our venue for our wedding reception. I think everyone had a good time in the booth and everyone's pictures looked soooo GOOD! Great props? Flawless skin? Four different poses? YES! YES! YES!

I'm so glad we went with Magbooth. At first, we wanted to save some money and so we looked at different options out there. Compared to 3-4 real photo booths that would work with our budget (I emphasize real because many "photo booths" are really just a fancy camera set up in front of a curtain + printer and not a true physical photo booth), we decided to stretch our wallets a little and get the one we really loved which was Magnolia and my first choice.  Honestly, the photo booth doubled as entertainment and our wedding favors for our party of 320+ guests and if the pictures turned out great, then our guests are most likely to keep it for themselves. I've personally tucked away many wedding photo booth pics because they were not flattering at all.

The whole process of getting the photo booth was easy. We were able to design the banner on the photo strips with the help of their in-house graphic designer. Some last minute changes we wanted to do with the font was not applied but no biggie since everybody is looking at their pictures anyway and not the banner! Aaron was our photo booth attendant for 4 hours that night (sorry you were not fed!) and he even let us start earlier since he was able to set up quickly. Even with the extra time, some of my friends did not get a chance to get into the booth but that's our fault for not warning them that the booth was shutting down at 11 p.m. We opted out of getting a photo album but got our CD with pictures yesterday! Thank you Magbooth!

My only regret is not having the time to get into that photobooth more myself! I guess some is better than none! Enjoy!

Some of my coworkers totally taking advantage of the booth's props!

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