{wedding photobooth}

These days if I was to arrive at a wedding reception that didn't have a photobooth, I would probably leave.  Alright, maybe that's being a little dramatic, but photobooths are so easy to execute and they really capture the mood of the reception that I dont see any reason why you wouldnt have one.  I have blogged about how we set up photobooths for our parties in the past and you can re-live that magic here.

For those of you who didn't memorize that post word for word, we generally set up a photobooth at parties that uses a wireless remote to trigger the camera.  That set up tends to work pretty well at parties populated by people in their 20s, but the remote trigger concept is pretty foreign to the older generation.  So for our wedding photobooth, we decided to hire Chad Cheverier of The Portable Photobooth to come "man" our camera all night long.  This was the best decision, we have ever made since it meant someone was there to double check that the exposure settings were correct and that the frame was centered on the people in the booth.  For about $100, we also rented a ring flash from Calumet Camera which is what gives all the pictures that amazing look and blinded every single one of wedding guests.  The basic set up of of booth looked something like this:

• Canon Digital Rebel T3
• Tripod
• Shutter Release
• Ring Flash
• Power Pack for ring flash (came with flash rental)
• 8GB memory card (this was almost full by the end of the night)
• extra battery for camera
• backdrop (more on that below)

The other big difference between our normal photobooths and the one for our wedding was the amount of time I put into creating the backdrop.  While the actual method I used to make this backdrop is straightforward and simple, the time it required was what truly made it a labor of love (the backdrop is now available to purchase here).  Since we purchased cotton fabric in our wedding colors in bulk to use for all kinds of decorations, I do not have a good sense of the exact yardage it took me to make this backdrop, but I would estimate that using 3 fabric colors (plus some gold metallic party fringe) would require at least 5 yards per color for a backdrop of this size.   Here are some general directions on how to construct this backdrop:

what you need:

•  plain white fabric large in the size you want your backdrop to be. I used a King size sheet. 
• cotton fabric in the various colors you wish to use for the triangles (you want to stay away from using very heavy or silky fabrics)
• metallic fringe decoration (if you want any sort of metallic like silver or gold in your backdrop you will need to use this since you aren't going to find something affordable or attractive in a fabric)
• rotary cutter and mat
• pins
• sewing machine

1. start by cutting your colored fabrics into rectangles sized 24 inches by 28 inches.  Then fold each of these in half so that you are left with a 24" by 14" piece. (these rectangles do not need to be exact, I eyeballed the cuts on these so mine definitely vary in size)
2. place one rectangle at a time on the cutting mat and cut "fringe" starting about one inch down from the folded side.  Each fringe is about 3/4 inch wide, but again this doesnt need to be exact. 
3. once you have cut fringe across the entire piece, fold it half along the 24" long side. Straighten fringe so everything lays flat then make a diagonal cut from the bottom corner on the "folded" side to 2 inches below the top corner on the "open" side
4. After you have cut plenty of fringed triangles, start pinning them to the large piece of white fabric. Working on row at a time from the bottom up, pin a row of tringles.  I didnt use any sort of pattern to the colors and I think it looks best that way.  You will also want to pin each tringle overlapping the next one by about 6 inches. 
5. Once you have a row pinned simply sew one line across the top and then continue on to pinning the next line!