How long should the photo booth rental be is probably the most overlooked detail when researching photo booth rentals. On average, a wedding reception is four to five hours long and that’s including the ceremony. So why is this so important? You could be wasting hundreds of dollars by renting a photo booth when there aren’t any guests there to take photos.

This seems like a no-brainer, but with so many items on your check list this can easily get missed. So here is what we suggest. Walk through your timeline and itinerary for your big day. You have the venue from 6pm to 11pm, do you need the photo booth for 5 hours? Probably not. Your ceremony starts at 6pm and ends at 6:30 or maybe even 7pm….guess what, nobody is taking photos in the booth at that time. There is one hour you can cut out of your 5 hour rental. Okay, the ceremony is over, let’s party! Cocktail hour here we come! Should you start the rental now? That’s a trickier question to answer and there are a few variables involved here as well. We like to have the booth open during the cocktail hour, especially if we are going to be set up outside of the main room or where ever people will be seated to eat. This makes sure the guests know we are there and we don’t have to rely on the DJ or your coordinator to let people know there is a photo booth available. But here’s one of those variables…let’s be honest, as much as your guests are there for you on your big day, they are also there for the food and drinks. And food and drinks will sometimes take priority over everything, including photo booth photos. You guys know your guests better than we do so try to anticipate how they might react once the hors d’oeuvres start making the rounds. The other variable here is if the photo booth is going to be set up inside the main room or at a different location from the cocktail hour. If so, take another hour off the rental period.

So we’ve made it through the cocktail hour and your guests are ready to head in and get their grub on. And as we said before, food and drinks usually take priority over everything else. Plus, that first hour or so is usually the time for introductions, first dances, and even speeches depending on the flow of your reception. That first hour gives you another opportunity to cut down on your rental period, and you do this by putting in an hour of IDLE TIME. For us we include up to one hour of idle time during the meal portion of the reception. We know this will be the slowest part of the event for us, so instead of paying us to stand there for an hour, feed us instead 🙂 The hour of idle time is a routine request that may not be common knowledge. Most other companies will charge you for that hour, so keep that in mind as well.

These suggestions can also apply to just about any event out there and can mean the difference between a five hour rental and a three hour rental. Don’t worry if you don’t have your final timeline set in stone, there is usually room somewhere for an hour of idle time. And you can always ask ahead of time if there is room to increase or decrease the length of your rental period. Check out our frequently asked questions page for more answers to some of the questions you already have or may not have thought of yet. Shoot us an email if you can’t find the answers you are looking for.