Is a Photo Booth Worth It at Your Wedding?

We run photo booths, so you would be right to take our answer with a grain of salt. What we can do is lay out what a booth actually does at a reception, what it replaces, and the situations where we would tell you to spend the money somewhere else, so that you can make the call yourself.

What a booth does that nothing else at the reception does

A wedding reception is a room of people who mostly do not know each other. Your college friends, your coworkers, and your great aunts have been seated at separate tables on purpose, and dinner keeps them there. A photo booth is the one thing in the room that pulls all of them into the same corner, and it keeps doing it until the last song.

It also gives guests something to do when they are not dancing. Not everyone dances, and the ones who do take breaks. Greta and Joe, who married at Excelsior, said their guests were constantly bouncing between the dance floor and the booth, and Avery and Cass put it more simply when they said it doubled as their entertainment.

That matters more than it sounds. The guests who are not dancing are the ones who drift out early, and a booth gives them a reason to stay, gather up whoever they came with, and go back for another round.

It is the favor people actually keep

Most wedding favors are chosen with care and left on the tables at the end of the night. A print is different, because every guest makes their own, with the people they wanted to be photographed with, wearing the outfit they spent weeks choosing.

Everyone in the photo gets a print every time, so a group of six never has to decide who keeps it. Rachel and Grant, who married at The Inn at Leola Village, chose the booth as their favor for exactly that reason. In their words, it gave their guests printed, high quality photos right then and there that they could take home the same night.

If you want the favor to outlast the refrigerator door, the Keychain Booth seals each guest’s photo into a real keychain at a second station beside the booth, and it is the one guests are still carrying years later.

You end up with photos nobody else takes

Your photographer is covering the ceremony, the portraits, the first dance, and the toasts. What they are not doing is standing in one spot all night photographing your friends in sequin hats. The booth is.

By the end of the night you have a record of nearly everybody who came, in the groups they chose, looking the way they looked once the dancing started. Every photo uploads to a live gallery as it is taken, so that guests can find their photos during the reception, and afterward you get the whole set with face detection, free downloads, and no watermark. You also get every photo without the print design on it, which is the version your photographer will want.

The guest book people open again

A signed guest book tends to go in a drawer. A guest signing album with the photo strips in it gets pulled out again, because it has faces in it. It is one of the add-ons couples choose most often, along with cocktail hour video messages, where guests record a message for you on a microphone while you are busy with photos.

One couple told us their attendant made sure every guest not only took a photo but also left a quick message in their photo guest book, and that they still look through it when they need a laugh.

When it is probably not worth it

There are weddings where we would tell you to skip it, and we would rather say so here than sell you a booth that sits idle.

• When the reception is short and fully scheduled. If dinner, toasts, and dancing fill every minute, guests will not have time to use it, and three hours is the shortest booking we take.
• When the only spot is outside with no cover. We take outdoor events only with cover overhead and an indoor backup, because sun, wind, and rain are hard on the equipment and on the photographs.
• When it would come out of your photographer’s hours. A booth is not a substitute for someone covering the day.
• When your DJ already includes one you are happy with. It is still worth knowing what you are getting, which is what our article on the DJ’s photo booth or a photo booth company is for.

How it compares with the alternatives

If the budget is tight, it is worth weighing a booth against the things couples usually consider instead.

• Disposable cameras on the tables. Inexpensive and charming, but the film has to be developed after the wedding, some of the shots inevitably come back blurry or dark, and nobody leaves with a photo that night.
• A phone selfie station. A ring light and a sign cost very little, but there is no print, nobody looking after it, and the photos end up scattered across guests’ camera rolls rather than in one gallery.
• An extra hour from your photographer. Worth it if you want more posed family groups, and the photos will be beautiful, but guests do not leave with anything and it does not give them something to do.

A booth is the only one of the four that hands every guest a print on the night, gives them a reason to gather, and puts every photo into one gallery for you afterward.

What it costs

Our booths start at $1,995 for the Keychain Booth, $1,495 for the AI Booth, $1,195 for the Glam Booth, and $995 for the Classic Booth, each for three hours. Every one of those includes an attendant for the whole booking, a print for every person in the photo, a backdrop, a print designed for your wedding, a custom start screen, and the online gallery, so that the starting price is close to the price you pay. A Saturday in October costs the same as a Friday in March.

If you want to see exactly what moves the number, read how much a photo booth rental costs in Lancaster, and every booth is side by side on our pricing page.

How to get the most out of one

If you do book a booth, a few decisions make the difference between one that gets used and one that runs all night.

• Put it where people pass. Somewhere guests walk between the bar and the dance floor, rather than a side room they have to go looking for.
• Open it when guests are free. A booth standing open through dinner is a booth nobody used, so we plan the hours around your timeline.
• Match the print to the day. Your names, your date, and something that agrees with your invitations.
• Decide on props, or none. Some couples want the table front and center, and others want clean photos where everyone looks like themselves.
• Choose color, black and white, or both. Our article on black and white photo booths explains why so many couples go with it.

So, is it worth it?

If you want your guests mixing, a reason for the non-dancers to stay, and a favor people keep, a photo booth does all three for one price, and it hands you a gallery of the night you would not get any other way. If your reception is short, outdoors without cover, or already stretched thin, spend the money where it matters more.

Either way, tell us the date and a little about the night, and we will tell you honestly whether a booth fits it, and which one.