Has anyone tried a diy Photo booth? How did it go?

For my brother's wedding, his florist/decorator offered a photobooth. She had props there and she used her phone to take the photos. Once the wedding was over, she sent all of the photos to the bride. The bride then forwarded all of the photos to each person in the photo. Not a lot of people used the photobooth because it was in a separate room from where the reception was held so I don't think a lot of the guests realized it was there. Also, a lot of their guests were older so they weren't as interested.

I wouldn’t do an instax for a diy photo booth because those are film and will run out and surprisingly not many people know how to refill those properly. I would opt for a cheap point-and-shoot on a tripod that you could keep forever.


I went to an anniversary party where they had a huge photo wall with props on a table and stuff but no camera or photographer. They had a big sign that said “Snap a pic and be sure to tag #50yearsinlove” or whatever the hashtag was. Everyone has smart phones nowadays so that would probably be the most cost effective option for them. It was still super fun!

View Quoted Comment I agree with the instax also because the film is EXPENSIVE and you don’t quite know how much of the film you’d need in that case.


I also like the idea of just letting people use their own phones. Providing props and a nice backdrop is great for that

I didn't know that was thing. I'm interested to hear more.

I'm actually using the instax. My brother did it for his and it was great. So much fun! The film is expensive, but still so much cheaper than an actual photobooth. We have props from amazon, a mini album for our guests to add photos in throughout the night, then also the instax guest book. The polaroid snaps has sd ports, but they don't have a long battery life and they have to be recharged with an USB. We'll be on a boat, so the double A's unfortunately work out better for our needs. Really wanted the sd slot so I could see what pics are guests are keeping. As for our crowd personally, we're all younger, so swapping out the film is nbd. But $300 vs $750, we'll take it!

We are setting up an area with props and a backdrop. Everybody has the fancy smartphones and I'm planning on just adding a hastag somewhere where people can post their pictures

View Quoted Comment I was thinking of making a flower wall and doing this same thing... very cost effective and not dependent upon someone operating it...

View Quoted Comment That’s what my sister in law is doing for me. She has a cricut machine so she’s making tons of paper flowers for a backdrop. Her dad made us a frame out of PVC pipes. We wanted to keep things low cost too.

We’re doing a DIY booth! I looked into a ton of options that allowed iPad/smartphone with printer but the printer portion is super complicated. We’re going to use my old Google Pixel phone set up on a tripod with ring light, and have it save in a Google Drive that we’ll share with everyone after the wedding to download. We figured we’d end up printing them and mailing it with the thank you notes as a nice favor after the wedding

Thank you everyone for the advice and feedback! Sounds like the Instax could potentially work well (with some signage and a young crowd) but I'm really liking the smartphone option too. I bought some photo booth stuff for the small wedding we're planning on the original date so I'm hoping to reuse it at the big celebration later in the summer. If we can have guests upload to a shared google photos album or app then it sounds like the best of both worlds I also love the idea of including the photos in thank you cards after the wedding.