Photo Booth Hire

Photo Booth Hire

With a photo booth it is all about the photos, because the print is what your guests walk away with at the end of the night. After that the practical choice is the shape of the thing in the room and how it fits your event. We hire six of them: three enclosed cabins you step inside, two green screen booths that drop a background in behind the group, and the open Magic Selfie Mirror you walk straight up to. They all print on the night, they all come with one of our staff to run them, and they are all happiest indoors or in a marquee, so the questions worth sorting before you book are how much floor you can give one, whether you want video as well as stills, and whether the prints need your names, a date or a company logo on them.

Three of the six are enclosed booths that a group steps inside. The classic photo booth is the print-wrapped cabin with a red curtain behind you and four shots to a strip, and you pick the wrap to suit the room, whether that is red or white Chesterfield, gloss black or a black-and-pink damask. It runs unlimited prints across the hire, which works out at around 400 photos on a three-hour booking. The video and photo booth is the same idea with a touchscreen that lets a guest record a video message of up to forty seconds instead of a still, so at a wedding people leave a message for the couple and at a conference you get a bit of feedback or a quick promo clip, all of it handed back with the photos. The Christmas photo booth is the same sort of pod wrapped in festive panels, with green screen winter backgrounds and a festive border on the print, and it is the one corporate Christmas parties tend to ask for because the print carries the company name.

Two of them work on a green screen, swapping a background in behind the group. The green screen photo booth is the cylindrical one with the red curtain entrance and seven backgrounds to choose from: disco, a Hollywood red carpet, a beach, world landmarks, underwater, a plain backdrop, or a Mystery setting we load with four images to fit your theme. The Green Screen Dream Machine is the touchscreen model with the long list of modes, from themed green screen sets and a 3D mode to a time-machine theme and spoof magazine covers, running into the hundreds of background combinations, so it suits anyone who would rather have the widest choice than one fixed look. Both print on the night the same as the cabins.

The Magic Selfie Mirror is the odd one out, and the one to look at if the room is short on a spare corner. It is a full-length mirror in a gold frame that guests walk straight up to, with a touchscreen that talks them through the pose, so there is no cabin eating floor space and no queue funnelled into a booth. It is the only one of the six that will send a guest the photo by email or text as well as printing it on the spot, and it comes set up with a red carpet, a rope-and-post barrier and a case of props. It sits happily indoors and will go outside under solid cover, though it runs off the mains so we would rather it stayed out of the rain.

Whichever you settle on, the cabins and the green screen booths want a flat, level spot of about 2.3m wide, 1.25m deep and 2.1m high, indoors or in a marquee, with a standard 13amp socket within reach. It is worth measuring that corner before the tables go in, because a function room fills up faster than people expect on the night, and the mirror is the way round a room that has not got the space. Every one of them is a staffed hire: one of our team brings it, sets it up, stays with it through the event to keep the queue moving and help people get a decent shot, and packs it down at the end, so nobody in your party is left running it. Guests get their prints there and then. From the booths you also get the full set afterwards on a USB stick, and the mirror sends guests their shots by email or text. We will add your names, the date or a company logo to the print layout beforehand at no extra charge if you send the wording over.

A booth often rounds off a bigger booking rather than being the only thing hired, running through the evening after a day of inflatables or a rodeo earlier on. One guest at a day like that, with the army assault course and the inflatables going as well, wrote afterwards that the photo booth was "a great addition to the day". If you are putting a wedding or a Christmas party together, the wedding entertainment and Christmas party entertainment pages cover what tends to sit alongside a booth, and the electronic game hire range has the arcade and reaction games that pair well with one at a corporate do.

Wedding and corporate venues usually ask more of a supplier than a house party does. Hotels, barns and licensed venues tend to want an insurance certificate before they let anyone set up, and plenty of booth operators are not cleared to work on licensed premises at all. We carry £10 million public liability insurance with the additional licensed-premises cover, so the booths are fine for pubs, clubs, hotels and most wedding venues, and the certificate is yours on request for the venue's file. The kit is all our own rather than sub-hired, every member of staff is enhanced-DBS registered and first-aid trained, which matters at a school prom or anywhere children are about, and the electrics are PAT-tested every year. We have run Monster Event Hire from our unit in Havant since 2002, covering Hampshire, Surrey, Sussex and into London.

When you enquire, tell us the venue and whether it is licensed, the date, what the room or floor is like where the booth would stand, roughly how many guests you are expecting, and whether you are after stills, video or the mirror. Send any print wording early if it needs a name, a date or a logo, and we will tell you which booth fits the space before anything is booked.