You are hosting on no sleep.
Let the visitors take the photos.
A sip and see is hosted by the people least equipped to run anything: parents a few weeks out from a birth, opening the house in waves so the baby can nap between them. Every visitor takes a photo of themselves holding the baby and then carries it home on their own phone. One QR code by the door puts all of those in a single private gallery you never have to chase.
The moments guests actually photograph at sip and sees
Why sip and sees work better on Picsui
Written for the person hosting this one, and checked against what the product actually does.
A newborn's photos stay in the room
Most new parents have a rule about the baby and social media, and a sip and see is where that rule gets tested by forty well-meaning phones. The gallery lives only at the link you hand out, is never listed anywhere, and gives visitors a place to put the photo that is not a public feed.
For the grandparent who could not fly in
A sip and see is a few hours in the daytime, which is exactly when a grandparent three time zones away is awake and waiting. Stream the afternoon with Live Pass on a private link and they meet the baby the same day everyone else does, with sound, from their own phone.
Approve at the 3 a.m. feed
Turn on host review and nothing appears in the gallery until you say so. You will be up anyway. Scroll the queue with one thumb while the baby eats, approve the good ones, quietly leave out the one where you look the way you feel, and nobody else ever knows it existed.
No app. No account. One scan.
Guests point their camera at a QR code and are uploading in seconds. Nobody installs anything, nobody creates a login, and the grandparents can do it as easily as the teenagers.
Private by default, never indexed
The gallery is only reachable by the link or code you share. Guest pages are blocked from search engines and named AI crawlers, and you can close the gallery whenever you choose.
You approve before anyone sees
Turn on host review and every upload waits in your queue until you approve it. AI screening flags anything questionable so you are not scrolling through hundreds of photos at midnight.
Broadcast it to the people who couldn't come
Live Pass is a standalone $39 one-time add-on: stream up to 90 minutes to 100 viewers on a private link, with audio. Family abroad watch on any phone, no app required.
Voice messages
Guests record up to 60 seconds of audio right from the upload page — a blessing, a toast, a story — saved next to the photos in the same gallery.
Full-resolution downloads
Download any photo, or the whole event as one archive, at original quality. What guests uploaded is what you keep — no compression, no watermark on paid events.
How it works
Set up in a minute. Collect for the whole event.
Create the event the week before, keep it private, and turn on host review if you want to see photos before other visitors do.
Put the QR code on a small sign by the front door and another by the drinks, the two places every visitor pauses.
Visitors scan, upload the photo they just took holding the baby, and can record a short voice message for the baby to hear years from now.
After the last wave leaves, download everything and send the link to the relatives who could not come.
Try uploading as a guest.
Scan this with your phone the way a guest at your event would. Choose a sample photo and upload it from your browser, then open the demo gallery to see it land.
- Scan the code with your phone camera — it opens straight in the browser.
- Upload a sample photo. Look for the upload confirmation so you know it reached the host.
Use a sample you are comfortable sharing with Picsui. Please keep personal or sensitive photos out of the demo.
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This is the same kind of code your guests scan at your event.
Getting the most from sip and sees
Put the sign where people leave, not only where they arrive. A visitor arriving has their hands full with a gift and a dish; a visitor leaving has just taken the one photo you want, of themselves holding the baby, and has thirty seconds by the door while they find their keys. A small card at the exit that says "Upload the photo you just took" gets far more than a sign at the entrance. If you are running visits in timed waves, ask the last person in each wave to remind the others before they go.
Give the guestbook a question with a date in it. "What do you want to tell her when she is eighteen?" produces something you will actually read aloud one day, where "Leave a message" produces congratulations. Great-grandparents who will not type will happily hold a phone and talk for the length of a voice message, and that recording, made in the first month of a life, is often the thing the family treasures most later. Keep each visitor's phone-holding brief and send them to a quiet room to record; the baby is the point, and a message shouted over the kitchen is not one you will play back.
Say the privacy rule once, in writing, on the sign. "Photos go to our private gallery, please do not post them" removes the awkward conversation and gives visitors somewhere to put the photo instead. Keep the gallery private, turn on host review if you want to see each upload first, and close uploads at the end of the day. The link keeps working for 365 days on an Event Pass, so the aunt who visits next month can still add hers, and the parents can download the whole set at full resolution whenever they finally have two free hands.
Common questions about sip and sees
What is a sip and see, and who hosts it?
A sip and see is an open house held after the baby arrives, usually a few weeks in, so friends and family can drop by, have a drink and meet the baby. The parents host it at home, often with a grandparent or a friend running the door and the drinks. Visits are short and staggered so the baby is not passed around for four hours straight. It replaces or follows a baby shower, and because the guest of honor is asleep for most of it, the photos are the only record that most of it happened.
How do I ask visitors not to post photos of the baby online?
Write it on the sign next to the QR code, so it reads as house policy rather than a personal request to each guest. Something like "We are keeping her off social media for now. Please upload your photos here instead" works because it offers an alternative. The gallery is private by default, reachable only through the link or code you share, and never indexed by search engines. Visitors can see each other's photos of the baby in one place, which is what they wanted from posting anyway.
My parents cannot travel. Can they still meet the baby that day?
Yes. Live Pass is a $39 one-time add-on that streams the event on a private link for up to 90 minutes to as many as 100 viewers, with audio, and they watch on any phone or laptop without installing anything. Prop a phone facing the sofa where visitors sit with the baby, or hand it to whoever is hosting the door for a walk around. Afterward they have the photo gallery too, at full resolution, so they can print the one they like.
Will visitors actually upload, or will I be chasing them for weeks?
Most people upload within a minute of being asked, as long as the ask happens while they still have the phone in their hand. The sign at the door does most of the work, and a scan takes them straight to an upload page with no app and no account to create. The gallery stays open for 365 days, so anyone who forgets can add theirs from the car. What does not work is asking by group chat a week later; by then the photos are buried.
How much does this cost for an afternoon at home?
An Event Pass is $29, paid once for one event. It includes unlimited uploads with a 25 GB fair-use bound, host review, voice and video messages, full-resolution downloads and 365 days of hosting. There is no subscription and no charge per visitor, so a small sip and see costs the same as a large one, and it costs the same whether visits are spread over one afternoon or a whole weekend. Live Pass for the grandparents is a separate $39 one-time add-on if you want it.
Every photo from sip and sees, in one place
One-time Event Pass, $29. No subscription, no per-guest fee.
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