The Photobooth Company

How To Use A Photobooth At A Wedding Reception

I recently came across an article from eHow on using a photo booth at a wedding reception. The article follows below. It also might be a great reference for those of you that really want a photobooth but are on a pretty tight budget.

Photo booths are a great way to entertain guests and capture priceless memories at your wedding reception. You'll get great pictures that will give you a cool behind-the-scenes look at your own wedding, or you can use the photos as favors that your guests can take home. You can either rent a photo booth from a rental company, hire a photographer to man one for you, or set up an easy DIY photo booth that your guests can operate themselves.

Things You’ll Need:

• Photo booth rental
• Large sheet or tapestry
• Clothesline
• Curtain clips
• Camera
• Tripod
• Remote shutter release

                    Step 1:

Decide whether you'd like to just rent a photo booth from a local rental company, or set one up yourself. Photo booths available for rent are the easiest solution, and allow the guests to print out their pictures instantly and take them home.They can be expensive, so you may want to consider setting up your own photo booth as described in Steps 4 through 8 below.                

                    Step 2:

Find out about any limitations to the photo booth rental. Many companies have a limit for the amount of pictures that can be taken or the number of hours you can have the booth on site. Ask about the delivery and pick-up details.

                    Step 3:

Place the photo booth in an area of the reception where it will not interfere with other events. For example, you may not want it in the background while you and your new spouse are being photographed cutting the cake or dancing. It should be easily accessible, but out of the way of the way of most of the action and the service staff.

                    Step 4:

Set up your own photo booth by stringing a clothesline between nearby trees or poles. Attach curtain clips to the top of a large piece of fabric in a color that complements your wedding color scheme, and string the clip loops onto the clothesline. If there's a free wall available, you could just nail the cloth onto the wall.

                    Step 5:

Set up a tripod 8 to 10 feet in front of the fabric background and attach the camera to it. Test the angle to make sure the subjects and fabric background are the only things that appear in the viewfinder. You may need to move the tripod closer or further away from the subjects.

                   Step 6:

Choose a high quality camera with a flash. If it's in your budget, you may want to hire a photographer to set up the equipment and man the camera. Even if you choose to do this, however, you should make the photo booth as self-serve as possible so your guests will feel uninhibited to pose as they wish. A photographer can also hook a printer up to the camera so the guests can take their pictures home.

                   Step 7:

Attach a remote cord or shutter release to the camera so guests can take the photos themselves without actually touching the camera.

            

Photo Booth Rental a Hot New Trend for Wedding Reception Fun

Photo Booth scrap booking has emerged as a popular new trend for couples wishing to add a lively element to their wedding reception.

Baltimore, MD (PRWeb) July 9, 2007 — Photo Booth scrap booking has emerged as a popular new trend for couples wishing to add a lively element to their wedding reception. “We have seen a measurable increase in wedding photo booth rental related searches,” says Gandhi Hurwitz, president of Bridal Guides,  a popular wedding planning web site. 

“Renting a photo both for the evening allows wedding guests to have fun and get loose behind the curtain,” explains Hurwitz. “The really fun part is all of the guests building a personalized scrapbook for the bride and groom to take home with them at the end of the evening.”

Julie Thomas, who was recently wed in Spring Lake, New Jersey, explains, “The photo booth was a huge hit. Our guests loved crowding in behind the curtain and acting goofy. There was a line all night to the booth. The best part was the scrapbook they created for us using their favorite photo strips. Each guest glued in their shots, and signed it for us. We will always treasure that scrapbook.”

Free Photographer For Your Destination Wedding!

Jen over at JK Photography is doing an awesome giveaway right now! The next three brides that sign up for a destination wedding package with her will get a free photography package! All you have to do is pay the way (there and back) for the photographer(s).

For such a great photographer, this is an awesome deal! Go and check it out for details.

Leadership Muskegon

Over the past several weeks I've been participating in a leadership program put together by Muskegon Community College and the Muskegon Chamber of Commerce, called Leadership Muskegon.

Here is the description of the program from their website:

The purpose is to prepare future community leaders who will assume important civic leadership responsibilities in Muskegon County.

This unique training opportunity, foundeed in 1982, has graduated more than 715 individuals who have assumed leadership roles in Muskegon County on civic, community, and governmental borads and commissions.

The class meets every other week on Tuesday morning, and we cover a wide area of topics relating to leadership. Some of them include: Environmental Concerns, Economic Development, Education and Arts, Criminal Justice, Diversity/Racism, Health Care and Public Service, and Leadership Skills.

Every year each group takes on a project that in some way benefits the community and promotes sustainability of the project. Our group is doing the following:

The following snippet is taken from our press release that was put out this morning:

The Leadership Muskegon class of 2007 announces the
birth of their class community project, “Tree of Unity”. The Tree of Unity
not only recognizes diversity in the Muskegon area, it represents a call of
action to the community to encourage and embrace our differences. The
project was chosen because of the shared interest in promoting the
revitalization of downtown Muskegon and celebrating our uniquely diverse
community.

Please Join us in celebrating diversity in Muskegon!

A lighting ceremony will take place on:
Thursday, November 29, 2007
Downtown Muskegon, Mi
5:30-7:00pm, official lighting at 5:45pm
Reception to follow in the Frauenthal Theater lobby

Also be sure to check out the website for more information!

Weird Things We Sometimes Do Before A Reception

Since setting up the photobooth before a wedding reception is not really the kinda thing you want to do in a suit and tie, we often find ourselves in a position where we need to change clothes, and don't have access to a convenient place to change.

    

Sometimes, vacant parking lots located a little ways off the main road work out as great places to change. And yes, I suppose changing in a bathroom at the reception hall would be the normal thing to do... but honestly, would that be as much fun?

Balancing My Work, My Life, and My Time

Successful entrepreneurs are like everybody else. They don't know what to do with their lives. They aren't sure how to balance meaning and money when it comes to work. And they have trouble managing their time.

This quote from a post about lightening up with your life got me to thinking about how the intense work I'm doing now should start to pay off shortly and I'll have the ability to lighten up again. After all it is nearly 10pm and I've been at the office since 9am and missed lunch since we had a power outage that lasted most of the afternoon.

It's been a really long journey working a full time at my "real job" as well as building, designing, and running the photobooths. Add to all that learning pretty much everything I know about business and areas related to business on my own.

Hopefully by next year I'll be able to pay the bills with the Photo booths and my stress levels will go down a notch. I'd also love to have some free time to get back to doing more volunteer work, and getting back into doing photography for my own pleasure.

However I never would have gotten as far as I have without the help and support of my friends and family. I know I probably don't thank them nearly enough.

Expo and Wedding Re-Caps

It's been a busy few weeks around here and I figured I would jot down a quick post during my lunch for an update.

Just got an e-mail from Laura this morning. Laura and Pete had their reception at St Cecilia's Music Society.

Hello Brian-

This is Laura.  I just wanted to tell you how much fun everyone had with the photo booth!  They all loved it and we loved our Guestbook! We took it with us the next day on our Honeymoon so that we could relive the night on the plane.  What a great idea.  I am so glad that we booked you and that you had our date open.

Their wedding planner Aletha @ Pearls Events has a much more indepth post about the details if you are interested. BTW she is a great wedding planner, with a really personal feel. If you are looking for someone you won't go wrong with her!

A lot of people ask about what our photobooths look like. The picture above shows our booth set up at Laura and Pete's reception. It blended in perfectly with their colors. And we are able to customize our booth colors to fit what ever style you are going for.

We also had a rental at Centennial Country Club for Ben and Jaci the weekend after Laura & Pete's and again the booth was slammed with people all night long. I'm pretty sure they broke the photo booth guestbook record as well, clocking in at about 250 pages and almost 300 photo strips!

Finally last weekend was the Wedding Expo at the Spring Lake Holiday Inn. It was much smaller than I had thought it would be and was also not super busy. Probably got a few rentals from it though, and hopefully it was worth the time, effort, and stress.

Grand Haven Wedding Expo

We've got a wedding expo coming up at the Spring Lake Holiday Inn tomorrow. Needless to say I'm pretty stressed out, as I usually get before each event. We've got a lot of last minute things we want to get done before tomorrow morning.

These things always turn out just fine in the end, and I tend to worry way more than I should. I'm going to try and work on that, for my own sake as well as the people helping me out.

Anyway I've got a few other things I want to write about as well, but they are going to have to wait until after this weekend. Here's the promo card I put together to hand out at the expo. Pretty happy with how it turned out!

The Photobooth Company... Now On Facebook!

Facebook recently released a Pages feature for businesses and other non people entities.

I set up a page for The Photobooth Company, so if you've used the booth, seen the booth, or just have facebook and read this blog; head over and add us as a fan!

And if you'd like to leave a review on the facebook page that would be awesome!

Wakeskate Video

In my spare time, which I must admit I don't get nearly enough of latley, I enjoy trying new things.

This is a video my friends and I put together. Last summer was the first time I've tried wakeskating and I have to admit, it was a lot of fun.

The idea of wakeskating is similar to wakeboarding, but there are no bindings. You wear shoes and basically just ride on a piece of wood while getting pulled by a seadoo or boat.

I picked up on it pretty quickly, but must admit I'm not anywhere near as talented as Jeff and Matt (the other two guys in the video)