After quite a bit of trial and error I decided to create two types of PhotoMosaics for the animation piece:

1. The background PhotoMosaics were generated using a grey tile, and by adjusting the amount of colour that AndreaMosaic filtered through from the base image I was able to control the increasing colouring of the animation.
2. The foreground PhotoMosaics were generated using the full colour tiles and use a special mask file in AndreaMosaic to limit the tiles to just Keren & Danni.

At the appropriate point in the animation, I used images that were created in GIMP by cutting the full colour foreground mosaic into the background mosaic.

Software used

JPEG Lossless Rotator: Initial rotating of photographs.

ImageMagick: Scripted grayscaling / resizing.

RIOT: Optimisation of web images.

AndreaMosaic Professional: Creation of the PhotoMosaics.

GIMP: Compiling the full colour slides and adjusting saturation levels.

DVD SlideShow GUI: Creation of the final animation.

The PhotoMosaics

There were two steps to creating the PhotoMosaic tiles for the animation:

Create Grayscale Slides

154 PhotoMosaics were created using the grayscaled photos, slowly increasing the amount of colour AndreaMosaic bled into the mosaic. 

The progression of the animation from the initial slide of Danni's Parents through to 158th slide that used 189 photos was finely tuned by sorting the photos into 16 priority groups.

Create Full Colour Slides

9 full colour PhotoMosaics were created using a mask file, which limited the tiles to just the area covered by Keren & Danni, and increasing the number of ½ and ¼ tiles to create added definition of the final mosaic.

Create the Lead-in Slides

Seth requested a lead-in so that he could time the start of his playing, so I created 4 slides using the coloured pattern and Keren's kd + medal image. It actually added a significant effect to the piece.

The Animation

After the slides were created they were compiled into an animation using DVD SlideShow GUI. I used Marek Lutonsky's recording of Bach's Air on a G-String for the audio (available via a link on YouTube)

Completed, I watched it over and over, and called it done... until a late-comer offered me some more photos to add to the project. Well, because of their close relationship I thought I'd get away with just re-doing the final image by just adding their photos to the final coloured mosaic (AndreaMosaic has a very useful feature where images that must be included in the mosaic can be defined, the other images are included on a best fit basis); I didn't think I could redo the whole 163 mosaics! So after a little bit of huffing and puffing it was finally, definitely done.

Until two more late-comers sent me quite a few extra photos: just a week out from the wedding! In the end I just couldn't resist the extra photos, so I redid the final mosaic again, cut it into the grayscale mosaic (again), re-inserted it into the animation and generated the video (again).

I was pretty sure no one would send me any more photos in the final week, so I finally called the project done and uploaded it to YouTube.