An Event Time Capsule Your Guests Write Themselves
An event time capsule is a batch of capsules bought for one gathering: each guest scans a QR code, writes a message from their own phone with photos or video if they have them, and picks an opening date inside a range you set. Every capsule is sealed the moment it is sent, addressed to one person you nominate, and opens on its own date — with no account, no app and nothing to install.
Ask a hundred people to send you a video after the party and about eleven will. Not because they do not care — because it is a task with no deadline, competing with the rest of their evening.
An event collection takes the collecting out. The QR code is already on the tables, the writing happens where the person already is, and what arrives is already sealed and already addressed.
How an event collection works
An event lives on your account, and it gives you one link and one QR code to print. It is built from the shape of the gathering — what it is, roughly how many people will write, and the dates involved — which today you settle with us.
Your guests do the rest. Each of them scans the QR code, writes to whoever the capsules are addressed to, attaches what they want to attach, chooses an opening date inside the range you set, and sends it. It is sealed at that moment — not by you, not by them, and not by us afterwards.
Then it waits. On its date, a capsule opens and reaches the person you nominated. If your guests picked different dates, they arrive one at a time over years rather than all at once, which is the part people underestimate about this.
What the organiser gets
One page, which you can leave open on a phone during the evening without it needing anything from you.
A link and a printable QR code
One QR code for the whole event. Put it on the table cards, on a poster by the door, or in a message to the group. Anyone holding it can write, and nobody signs up for anything.
A live count
How many capsules have been written and how many are left, as they come in. It is the number that tells you whether to ask us for more before the evening ends.
The list of who has written
Names and times, updating as guests send. Not the messages: those are sealed from you as much as from anyone else until they open.
Recipients, chosen by you
Every capsule from the event is addressed to the recipients you select — the couple, the person retiring, or the family. You choose them from your address book before the link goes live.
The dates, fixed in advance
The window guests can write in, and the range of opening dates they may choose from, are both agreed before your link goes live. A guest cannot pick a date outside that range, so nothing opens at a moment you did not agree to.
The page your guests land on
Your event's name, a banner chosen when the event is set up, and a few lines you write yourself and can change at any time: what to write about, who it is for, and when they will see it again.
What a guest actually does
Thirty seconds, standing up, holding a drink, on a phone that is at 12%. That is the whole design constraint.
Scan
The QR code opens a page with your event's name on it and your few lines under it. No app, no download, no account, no password to invent.
Write
A name, a message, and files if they have any — a photo from that evening, a short video, a voice note recorded in a quieter corner.
Choose the date
Any date inside the range you set. Some people choose the first anniversary, some choose eighteen years out. Both are the right answer.
Send
It is sealed on send, and the screen says so. If they leave their own address, they get a copy on the opening day too.
A guest can write more than one, and each capsule written comes out of the batch — worth knowing before printing a QR code for two hundred people with fifty capsules behind it.
The QR code has to exist before the evening does
Your event is prepared with you first, so the useful moment to get in touch is the week you send the invitations — not the afternoon of.
Where these work
The pattern is always the same: a room full of people who will never be in one place again, and one person the evening is about.
Weddings→
A hundred and twenty guests, the couple as recipients, and a first or tenth anniversary to open on. The capsules the couple writes to each other are separate; these are everyone else's.
Birthdays and retirements→
A message from everyone in the room, addressed to the person the evening is for, opening a year later when the party is long over and the house is quiet again.
Graduations and leavers' evenings→
A year group on its last night together, each writing to whoever the class nominates, opening at a reunion nobody has organised yet. The one shape where the organiser is a teacher or a parent rather than the recipient.
Reunions, clubs and teams
Everybody writes on the night, and the set opens at the next reunion. The organiser holds the batch, so nobody has to still be findable in five years for it to work.
Companies, launches and last days
The end of a project, the opening of a building, the last day in an office everyone is fond of. Addressed to whoever will still be there to read them.
This is not how a normal capsule works
A personal capsule has exactly one author. Whoever creates it is the only person who can put anything in it, which is why our other pages tell you to collect your guests' videos by email and upload them yourself.
An event is the other shape. The capsules are bought as a batch, each one is written and sealed by a different person from their own phone, and none of them passes through you. You choose who they are for and when they may open; you do not assemble them, and you do not read them first.
That is the trade. You give up editorial control over what people write, and in exchange you get the messages that would otherwise never have been sent.
How you get one
Setting one up yourself is coming soon. For now, tell us what you need and we prepare it with you.
An event is a real thing you can have for your gathering: a batch of capsules, one QR code to print, and a range of opening dates you decide. What changes from one event to the next is its shape — how many capsules, when guests can write, how wide the opening range runs, and how much room each of them gets — and that is settled once, with you, before anything is printed.
Tell us when the gathering is, roughly how many people will write, and who the capsules should reach. We come back with a quote. Once it is paid, you accept the event conditions and choose your recipients, your link starts working — and not before, so a QR code cannot go out into a room and fail.
If more people turn up than you planned for, we can add capsules while the event is still running. Nobody has to do anything about it in the middle of the evening.
Event capsule questions
What is an event time capsule?
Do guests need an account or an app?
Who receives the capsules when they open?
Can the organiser read what guests wrote?
What if a guest writes something they should not have?
How much does an event cost?
One QR code on the tables. A hundred sealed messages.
Tell us the date, the gathering, and who it is all for.