Whether you are going to rent a photo booth for your wedding, your professional photographer is providing one, or you want to set up a DIY photo booth, you will need to make sure you pick a great selection of props. Props can liven up even the most boring of wedding photographs, you could end up with a photo of your great grandma with a mustache playing an inflatable guitar, your wedding photo booth can bring out a side of your relatives you never knew about! Just think of all the fun photography you will have to look through at the end of your big day and browse through this list of suggestions of great props for your wedding photo booth.
Inflatable dinosaurs are available from Oriental Trading. You get a pack of 6 different jumbo inflatable dinosaurs for $17.99. Of course this works best if you are having a larger photo booth. It might be hard to cram them into a photo booth rental, at least if you plan on getting more than one in a photograph.
Parasols can be a great addition to an open area photo booth. Provide one or more depending on the size of the photo booth. You can find a variety of parasols from Amazon starting at $5 for an oriental one and going up in price for more intricate designs, embellishments, and colors. Pick some that match your wedding theme or colors if possible.
Feather boas, what girl does not love feather boas? Of course they can be fun for the guys also! You can save money and find a good selection of boas (princess, ostrich feather, chandelle, marabou, and fancy boas as well as feather leis) from Party Feathers for around $1 apiece. They have a great selection of colors so you can get a variety or you can stick to boas that match your wedding colors.
Nerd glasses can be found at pretty much any thrift store, dollar store, or drug store. Just pop out the lenses of the biggest, geeky pair of sunglasses or reading glasses you can find. Amazon has nerd glasses aka coke-bottle glasses with round lenses that actually distort the look of the wearer’s eyes for $2 here and also vintage Buddy Holly Wayfarer glasses available in white, red, black, or leopard/tortoiseshell here for $6.95 and under.
Antique frames can be found at a local thrift store or flea market. Spray paint them neon, metallic, or to match your wedding colors so your guests can “frame” themselves.
Top hats are a great choice for the men, especially if you can find one that looks like the mad hatter from Tim Burton’s version of Alice in Wonderland. These can be pricy though if you get too creative with them. If you don’t want to spend your entire wedding photo booth prop budget on one hat, you might want to go with bright glitter top hats from Oriental Trading, $14.99 per dozen.
Neon gangster hats are available from Oriental Trading for $7.99 per dozen with various colors.
Shutter shades are also available from Oriental Trading for $7.99 per dozen with various colors.
Bridal veil can be found at your local craft store or Wal Mart. If you can’t find one you like you can make one by gluing tulle to a headband, it’s meant to be there for novelty so you don’t need to put a lot of work into it.
Bouquet of fake flowers can be fun for recreating the bridal bouquet toss, craft stores usually have small collections of flowers for $1 or a little more so you would just need to wrap ribbon around it. For more detailed instructions check out this DIY bridal bouquet article.
Moustaches are huge right now. The best way to save money on this and some of these other props would be the DIY route. To make your own clay mustache check out Martha Stewart’s tutorial Mustache on a Stick. Wedding Chicks also has a Do-It-Yourself Fake Mustaches for Weddings guide. You can try using this printable page of mustaches as either an example for your mustaches or print them on a heavy weight paper to use them on their own! If you prefer to buy them pre made, you can find villainous hairy mustaches, one dozen for $4.99 from Oriental Trading.
Wigs, who doesn’t love wigs? Your local party store or dollar store might have some available or you can check out Party Mart, they have a good selection of funny wigs and some of them are even under $10 each, almost all of them are under $20 each.
Chalk boards are a great way for guests to send a message like wedding well wishes. You can make your own by spray painting the glass in a picture frame with chalk board spray paint or you can check out the Chalkboard Speech Bubble from Photo Jojo for $29 for the chalkboard and chalk.
Viking helmets can be found for relatively cheap online. They are available from Windy City Novelties for only $4.80. Browse around the site for more great novelty items that I have not listed, but match your personality and your wedding.
Idle hands are the devil’s plaything so fill them up with hand cuffs, boxing gloves, long opera gloves, Mickey Mouse gloves, or prim little wrist length gloves.
Bubbles look great floating around in the foreground and background of photographs so pick up some bottles at your local dollar store or Wal Mart.
Other inflatables such as an inflatable treasure chest cooler to house all of the props for your wedding photo booth, an inflatable skeleton, inflatable conversation hearts, or inflatable guitars.
Additional Tips
1. Browse the dollar store, thrift stores, and your local Freecycle for random items that could make strange and exciting props. Bonus points if they are actually relevant to your wedding theme and/or colors.
2. Keep in mind that the brighter and crazier the better it will look in photos and the more it will get your guests in the mood to be wacky and show off for your wedding photo booth.
3. Look for hats, glasses, and anything you wear on your head or face — Mickey Mouse ears, pillbox hat, cat eye glasses, fake noses, wax lips, monocle, eye patch, cowboy hat, pimp hat, pirate hat, Indian headdress, plastic animal masks like the ones in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. If you can dream it, you can have it as a prop for your wedding photo booth!
4. If you have props that you don’t want to keep, encourage guests to take their favorites home with them so you don’t find yourself with boxes of junk mixed in with all of your new wedding gifts.
5. Don’t forget to send a disk with photo booth photos or a link to where they are posted online along with your thank you cards.
