After perusing through a lot of wedding blogs, I decided that we needed to have a photo booth. I briefly entertained the idea of renting a photo booth until I found out there were around $1,000. Um, no thanks. Wasn’t planning on making these pictures magazine worthy, just wanted to have a little fun.
To create our wall, we found a large vintage looking frame at Salvation Army and painted it white. We then purchased a standard sheet of plywood and 2 2 x 4s from Lowes (after a pretty sketchy ride to my parents’ house in which Mr. A and I both held onto the plywood out our car window…note to self don’t let Lowe’s employees tie things to your car roof). My older brother, who is pretty skilled with power tools, cut out a rectangle from the plywood that was slightly smaller than our frame size. He also measured the 2 X4s to the proper height so that they could be screwed to the back of the plywood at a diagonal to form the vertical support beams.
Then, I got to teach the Mr how to wallpaper. Yup, I’m a girl and I know how to wallpaper. This is what you get when you grow up around a Dad who can fix anything and I mean anything. Wallpapering can be a frustrating task because it’s pretty easy to rip. If you aren’t patient or gentle, don’t even bother trying to wallpaper. You’ll just end up in a rage (cough::Mr. A::cough).
Once the wallpaper dried completely, we glued the frame around its opening. In order to make the wall look more substantial, we also decided to add some molding to the top and bottom. We thought it made it look more like a wall.
After allowing those to dry thoroughly, we screwed in the supports on the backside to ensure it would stand.
And guess what, it did. Then we unscrewed the supports so that we could transport our photo booth more easily. We thought that once we removed the supports we would be able to fit the photo booth into someone’s SUV.
Next to the photo booth, we placed a 90 inch round with signage indicating that it was indeed a photo booth as well as some handmade props (a chalkboard and some funny diy mustaches and lips).
We took a really informal approach with the photography method for this because a) I didn’t want to pay someone or burden someone with a job and b) the whole thing was just supposed to be for fun anyway.
So we had a camera set up on a tripod for people to use.
At the end of the day, this low maintenance solution worked out really well and we were shocked to see that we had over 60 photos.
Here are a few of my favorites straight from our camera:
For the $100 that we put out for this project (well, not including the U-Haul), I think we got an amazing return. Our guests had so much fun with it and talked about it for days. I was really proud of us for making this ourselves and even prouder that I got my older brother to help. It’s so satisfying to see something come together that you’ve made with your own two hands.
My only regret is that Mr. A and I didn’t make time to take pictures at the photo booth. It seriously just slipped our minds. Oh well, I guess I can live vicariously through our guests.
Follow our newlywed journey through love, laughter and happily ever after. I'm Mr. Adam's best friend, a wedding fanatic, a health food nut, a yoga fiend, an arts & crafts-ers, a DIY-er, a wannabe world traveller, a pinterest addict and a Jesus lover. I hope you enjoy our wedding/newlywed/travel/food/healthy living/crafting adventures.
Definitely worth the angst and drama that took place in my side yard while your father was mowing ; )
Haha I totally forgot about that part Mom
Such a great idea! I also love the lips and mustaches everyone got! Those are cool
~Lisha
The props were my favorite too Lisha.
Stopping by from SITS. You know if you still have that photobooth wall you can still take photo booth pictures? Do it on an anniversary! “One year later” photos or something and make it a tradition. Put up new wall paper, paint the frame a different color and take it with you to some new place like a park or make a back drop in your garage or something and set it up there.
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That’s such an awesome idea. Unfortunately we threw it away after the wedding. We have a tiny apartment and it was way too big to store anywhere.