Photo Booth Recommendations?

lolahippo

Hello MSE,

I am getting married in August 2014 and would like to hire a photo booth but they all seem so extortionate, or maybe it's just me... The cheapest one I managed to find was £395. Given that we are trying to do our wedding on a budget of £6,500, that seems quite substantial to me.

Does anyone have any recommendations for photo booths that they have used before, that they could say was worth the money? I'm obviously conscious that it's a 'you get what you pay for' situation. We don't want polaroid cameras/film as when I worked out the costs it came out quite expensive as well, and then there's the issue of who takes the photos, what if they waste the film etc...

I'm from the Hampshire/West Sussex area.

Jo_F

http://www.pinkapplestudios.co.uk/

ceh209

Are you having a photographer / have you booked your photographer yet? I've seen some do a photo booth as an add-on for around £200

Sorry no specific recommendations as I'm not from that area

74jax

have you considered making your own?

We hooked up a camera to the laptop, set the laptop so it came up saying something like 'press the button' and then a timer counted down.

We bought masks, frames, wigs, chalk board etc. The cost for ours was approx £40.

Ture your guests do not get them to take away, but we used them for thank you cards to them and uploaded to a password site for them to download if they wanted.

As for worth the money - ours was used all night, it ws in an area of the room so no-one had to leave to go and use it and it was really popular, our wedding was unusual anyway so all our guests enjoyed playing with the items and those that didn't want to didn't have too.

LutonGirl

Have you heard of WedPics? My sister has been invited to a wedding where the B&G have set this up. Looks like fun. Guests can take their own using smartphones and upload to the app.

gadgeteer_2

£395 doesn't seem that bad if it's a professionally made booth, with a good variety of props, double prints and a member of staff.

The dye-sub printers that a professional will use will be fairly expensive to run double prints on all night. The props get broken, lost all the time so they also have to factor that into their costs.

And of course the booths themselves are not cheap to buy either.

You can do it yourself of course but it won't look as professional. If you are OK with that then you can get a simple backdrop, a camera on a tripod and some props. Get a friend/family to press the button.

rivergold

I'd recommend hiring one quite local to you.

I used photobooth.co.uk but they arrived late (they did not even blame traffic or apologise) and 45 minutes after the scheduled start time, they were still tweaking the booth. My son was waiting eagerly to use it and his first video was 50 minutes after the agreed start time.

The guy made sure he started packing up within about 10 minutes of the original end time though!

I can prove the delayed start because he left timestamped photos of himself on our USB stick with various things wrong (focus, caption positioning) at various times, before finally getting it resolved.

Despite this proof, the company insisted the booth was up and running just 15 minutes later than booked (and still no apology!), even though I showed them the out of focus photos of their operator that were being produced later.

It didn't affect us too badly as our meal had overrun anyway, though I had wanted to use it in the gap between courses to entertain my son and distribute teaser shots amongst our guests to rev up their interest.

I also tried hiring posepod.co.uk who took payment in full and then later cancelled (with a refund) because they had double booked us. They favoured the other couple who had just paid a deposit. This caused a lot of stress, and extra outlay, with just a few weeks to go before the wedding, which is why we eventually had to go for an operator from further afield as so few companies were still available.

rivergold

Also, be careful of the wedding websites and take their so-called reviews with a pinch of salt. I suspect many of them only publish "good" reviews.

My own experience with Hitched is that they did not publish a review where I gave their advertiser low marks.

I find this quite distasteful as they describe them as "reviews" rather than "testimonials". You might expect testimonials to be positive, whereas if something is described as a set of reviews, then you expect them to contain an unbiased selection of the good and the bad.

Picky

74jax wrote: »

have you considered making your own?

We hooked up a camera to the laptop, set the laptop so it came up saying something like 'press the button' and then a timer counted down.

We bought masks, frames, wigs, chalk board etc. The cost for ours was approx £40.

Ture your guests do not get them to take away, but we used them for thank you cards to them and uploaded to a password site for them to download if they wanted.

As for worth the money - ours was used all night, it ws in an area of the room so no-one had to leave to go and use it and it was really popular, our wedding was unusual anyway so all our guests enjoyed playing with the items and those that didn't want to didn't have too.

How did you do this? Did you use a specific program? Were the guests able to see their photo after it had been taken?