You have been booked for your first wedding. Or maybe your fifth. Either way, there is a particular kind of pressure that comes with setting up a 360 video booth at someone's wedding that no corporate event or birthday party quite matches. The couple has been planning this day for months, possibly years. They are paying you to deliver an experience their guests will remember. And unlike a corporate function where a glitch gets an eye-roll, a wedding malfunction gets remembered in family stories for decades.
The good news is that weddings are also where 360 booths shine brightest. The energy is high, the outfits are excellent, and guests are genuinely excited to try something different. Get the setup right and your booth will be the highlight of the evening reception. Get it wrong and you will spend the night apologising, troubleshooting, and wondering why you did not prepare better.
This guide covers everything from the venue recce to the day-after delivery, with a focus on the practical details that actually determine whether your wedding booth runs smoothly or falls apart.
Why weddings love 360 booths
Traditional photo booths have been a wedding staple in the UK for over a decade. They work, they are familiar, and couples know what they are getting. But 360 video booths have rapidly overtaken them for one simple reason: the output is dramatically more shareable.
A strip of four photos from a standard booth gets tucked into a pocket and maybe posted on Instagram the next day. A 360 slow-motion video of a bridesmaid striking a pose with confetti flying gets posted within minutes, shared to stories, sent to group chats, and watched repeatedly. The format is inherently more dynamic and more social-media-friendly than a still image.
Weddings also provide the perfect conditions for 360 content. Guests are dressed up. The atmosphere is celebratory. People are willing to be silly, dramatic, and creative in ways they would never be at a conference or product launch. Groups of friends pile onto the platform together, couples recreate their first dance in slow motion, and children do things that are genuinely hilarious on camera.
For operators, weddings are also among the most profitable bookings in the events calendar. A typical evening reception booth hire in the UK runs between £400 and £900 depending on your area, the package inclusions, and the venue. Peak wedding season — May through September — can fill your weekends for months in advance if your reputation is strong.
The catch is that weddings are also the least forgiving environment for mistakes. You get one chance to get it right. There is no rescheduling.
Equipment checklist
Before you think about the venue, make sure your kit is complete and tested. Nothing is more stressful than realising you have forgotten a cable at a venue forty miles from home.
- 360 spinning arm and base platform — tested and functioning, with a smooth, consistent rotation speed
- Phone mount and clamp — secure enough that the phone will not shift during rotation, even after hours of use
- iPhone — fully charged, with booth software installed, tested, and configured for the event
- Ring light or LED panel — battery-powered if possible, or with a long enough cable to reach a power source
- Extension leads — at least two, each a minimum of five metres, with a four-way adapter
- Portable speaker — Bluetooth, fully charged, loud enough for the immediate booth area without overwhelming the DJ
- Props box — sunglasses, feather boas, signs, hats, anything that looks good in slow motion
- Signage — a small standing sign or A-frame explaining how the booth works and how to get your video
- Gaffer tape — for securing cables to the floor and preventing trip hazards
- Power bank — minimum 10,000mAh, to keep your phone topped up throughout the evening
- Backup phone — if you have one, bring it. Configured and ready to swap in if your primary device has issues
- Cleaning cloth — fingerprints accumulate on the phone lens surprisingly quickly
- Cable ties and velcro straps — for tidy cable management around the base
Scouting the venue (before the day)
If at all possible, visit the venue before the wedding day. This single step prevents more problems than any amount of day-of improvisation. Many UK wedding venues — country houses, barns, hotels, marquees — have quirks that only become apparent when you physically stand in the space.
Power access. Where are the nearest sockets to your intended booth location? Are they accessible, or hidden behind furniture? Many barn venues and marquees have limited power points, and the ones that exist may already be allocated to the DJ, caterer, or lighting rig. Confirm with the venue coordinator exactly which sockets you can use.
Floor surface. Your platform needs to sit level and stable. Flagstone floors, uneven wooden boards, and gravel surfaces can all cause wobble, which translates directly into shaky footage. If the floor is uneven, bring adjustable feet or shims to level the base.
Ceiling height. The spinning arm needs clearance. Measure the height of the arm at full extension and check that nothing — beams, chandeliers, hanging decorations, fairy lights — will interfere with the rotation. Low ceilings in older venues are a common issue that can force you to adjust your arm length or position.
Mobile signal and Wi-Fi. Test the signal strength at your intended location. If you are relying on mobile data for instant sharing, weak signal will slow or prevent uploads. Many rural venues have notoriously poor coverage. Plan for offline operation and batch uploading if necessary.
Natural light and windows. If your booth will run during daylight hours or golden hour, large windows behind the platform will blow out your footage. Note where the light comes from and plan your positioning to avoid backlighting problems.
Foot traffic flow. Watch how guests will move through the space during the reception. Your booth should be visible and accessible but not blocking the path to the bar, toilets, or dance floor. A booth that disrupts the natural flow of the room creates friction with the venue staff and the couple.
Setting up: step by step
On the day, arrive with at least ninety minutes of setup time before guests are expected to use the booth. Two hours is better. Rushing the setup is how mistakes happen.
Step 1: Confirm your location. Check in with the venue coordinator or wedding planner. Confirm that the spot you agreed on is still available and that nothing has changed in the room layout. Tables, centrepieces, and decoration arrangements sometimes shift on the day.
Step 2: Lay out power. Run your extension leads first, before anything else goes down. Tape cables to the floor immediately using gaffer tape. At a wedding, guests will be walking in heels, carrying drinks, and not looking where they step. An untaped cable is a trip hazard and a liability. Route cables along walls and under tablecloths wherever possible.
Step 3: Position and level the platform. Place the base in your chosen spot and check it is level using a spirit level app on your phone. Adjust feet or add shims if needed. The platform must be rock-solid. Any wobble will transfer through the arm to the phone and into the footage.
Step 4: Attach the arm and mount the phone. Assemble the spinning arm according to your hardware's instructions. Mount the phone securely and test the clamp by gently shaking the arm. The phone should not move at all. Tighten everything one more time after the first test spin.
Step 5: Position your lighting. Set up your ring light or LED panel. The light should illuminate guests on the platform evenly from a consistent angle. Avoid positioning it where the spinning arm will cast a moving shadow across the subject. Test by standing on the platform yourself and checking the footage.
Step 6: Configure the software. Open your booth app. Load the correct overlay and branding for this specific wedding. Set the video speed, clip duration, intro and outro sequences, and sharing method. Run three to five complete test captures and verify the full workflow: capture, process, brand, share.
Step 7: Test sharing. Scan the QR code yourself. Does the video load on your phone? Is the quality acceptable? Is the branding correct? Send a test link to a friend and ask them to confirm it works on their device. This is your last chance to catch issues before guests arrive.
Step 8: Set out props and signage. Arrange your props table within arm's reach of the platform but out of the arm's rotation path. Place your explanatory signage where guests approaching the booth will see it naturally.
The first guest to use the booth sets the tone for the evening. If their experience is smooth and the video looks great, word spreads through the room within minutes. If it stutters, crashes, or takes too long, that word spreads even faster.
Lighting that actually works
Lighting is the single biggest variable in your output quality, and wedding venues are notoriously inconsistent. A dimly lit barn with fairy lights looks romantic to the human eye but produces muddy, grainy footage on a phone camera. A hotel ballroom with harsh overhead fluorescents creates unflattering shadows and washed-out skin tones.
Your ring light is your baseline. It provides consistent, controllable illumination regardless of what the venue offers. Position it at roughly chest height for the average guest, angled slightly upward. This flatters facial features and reduces under-eye shadows. If your ring light is adjustable, set it to a warm white — around 4000K to 4500K — which complements most skin tones and blends well with the warm ambient lighting typical of wedding receptions.
Avoid competing with the DJ's lighting. Coloured wash lights, strobes, and moving heads can wreak havoc on your footage. If the DJ's lights are reaching your booth area, talk to them before the event starts. Most DJs are happy to adjust the wash in your immediate zone. If they cannot, position your ring light to overpower the ambient colour as much as possible.
Watch for backlight. If there are windows, candles, or bright decorative lighting behind your platform, they will silhouette your guests and blow out the background. Reposition if you can. If you cannot, increase your ring light intensity and accept that the background will be bright.
Test at actual event lighting levels. During setup, the room will likely be fully lit with overhead house lights. The actual event lighting will be dramatically different — usually much darker, with accent lighting and candles. If possible, ask the venue to switch to evening lighting while you test, or at least dim the overheads to approximate the real conditions.
Music and overlays
The audio and visual branding of your clips can elevate them from a basic spinning video to something that feels polished and shareable. For weddings, this means thinking carefully about tone.
Music selection. Choose tracks that match the energy of a wedding reception without being distracting. Upbeat, feel-good instrumentals work well. Avoid anything with explicit lyrics or heavy bass that might clash with the DJ's music. Many booth operators maintain a curated playlist of royalty-free tracks that suit different event types. For weddings, lean toward warm, celebratory energy rather than club bangers.
If the couple has a specific song or genre in mind, accommodate it. Some couples request a specific track for the booth, particularly if it ties into their theme. Ask about music preferences during the booking process so you can prepare in advance.
Overlay design. For weddings, the overlay should feel elegant, not corporate. Think thin borders, soft typography, and muted colour palettes that complement the wedding's colour scheme. Ask the couple or planner for their wedding colours, font preferences, and any specific wording they want included — names, date, hashtag, venue name. A customised overlay that matches the wedding's visual identity feels like part of the celebration rather than a generic add-on.
Keep overlays subtle. A thick frame and large logo screams "commercial product." A delicate border with the couple's names and date in an elegant font says "thoughtful detail." The goal is enhancement, not branding. This is their wedding, not your advertisement.
Managing the queue
At a good wedding reception, your booth will attract a steady stream of guests, particularly in the first ninety minutes after the evening reception begins. Managing this flow efficiently is critical to the guest experience and your own sanity.
Set expectations early. Your signage should clearly explain: step on, strike a pose, get your video via QR code. The simpler the instructions, the faster the queue moves. If your software supports auto-capture, make this obvious so guests do not stand on the platform waiting for someone to press a button.
Keep each session short. A single 360 capture should take between fifteen and thirty seconds of actual recording time, plus another fifteen to thirty seconds for processing and sharing. If you are regularly exceeding ninety seconds per guest from the moment they step on to the moment they walk away with their video, something in your workflow needs streamlining.
Encourage groups. Groups of three to five people create the most entertaining clips and move the most guests through the booth per capture. A single guest standing alone on the platform looks less dynamic and uses the same amount of time. Gently suggest that people grab friends and come back together.
Handle the quiet moments. Every wedding has lulls — during speeches, the first dance, the cake cutting. Use these gaps to clean the phone lens, check storage space, top up the battery, and review recent clips for quality issues. These are also good times to approach the couple directly and offer them a private session at the booth, which they will almost certainly not have had time for during the rush.
Know when to step back. You are there to provide a service, not to be the entertainment. During key moments of the wedding — speeches, first dance, bouquet toss — your booth should be quiet and you should be unobtrusive. Some operators switch off the ring light and speaker during these moments as a courtesy. The couple and their planner will notice this professionalism.
Sharing videos on the day
The sharing experience is where you either delight guests or frustrate them. Everything up to this point — the hardware, the lighting, the software — exists to produce a clip that a guest can watch on their phone within seconds of stepping off the platform. If the sharing fails, the entire effort is wasted.
QR codes are the standard. Display a QR code on a screen, a printed card, or within the booth software interface itself. The guest scans it, the video loads in their browser, and they save it to their phone. This flow should take under ten seconds once the video has finished processing. If guests are struggling with the QR code, the code is either too small, poorly positioned, or the lighting makes it hard to scan. Using SpinCam 360 or a similar modern booth app that generates high-contrast QR codes sized for easy scanning helps eliminate this friction.
Plan for poor signal. If venue Wi-Fi or mobile data is weak, your sharing flow needs to work locally. Some apps create a local hotspot that guests connect to, serving videos over a direct connection without needing internet access. Others queue uploads and provide a gallery link that populates once you are back in range. Know which approach your software uses and test it in advance.
Have a backup sharing method. AirDrop works brilliantly for iPhone-to-iPhone transfers and does not require internet. Keep it enabled as a fallback. For Android guests, a quick NFC tap or a direct share link via text can fill the gap. The goal is that no guest leaves without their video.
Collect emails if the couple wants a gallery. Some couples want a complete gallery of all 360 clips from their wedding, delivered as a collection after the event. If this is part of your package, set up email collection within the sharing flow so you can send the gallery link later. Make it optional — not every guest wants to hand over their email address at a party.
After the wedding
Your job does not end when the last guest leaves the dance floor. The post-wedding follow-up is where you turn a one-off booking into recurring referrals and repeat business.
Back up everything immediately. Transfer all raw footage and processed clips to a hard drive or cloud storage before you do anything else. Phones get dropped, data gets corrupted, and storage gets accidentally wiped. Make a backup the night of the event or first thing the next morning. Keep the backup for at least thirty days.
Deliver the gallery within 48 hours. If the couple's package includes a compiled gallery of all clips, send it within two days. This is when excitement is still high and guests are most likely to revisit and share the videos. A gallery delivered a week later loses most of its impact.
Send a thank-you message to the couple. A brief, genuine message thanking them for having you at their wedding goes a long way. Include a direct link to their gallery and mention that you are happy for them to share it with guests who might not have received their clip on the night.
Ask for a review. Timing matters. Wait five to seven days after the wedding — enough time for the couple to return from any honeymoon or rest period, but not so long that the event fades from memory. A simple message asking if they would be willing to leave a review on Google, Facebook, or your booking platform of choice is perfectly appropriate. Most happy couples are glad to do it.
Request permission to share clips. If you want to use footage from the wedding in your own marketing or social media, always ask first. Most couples are fine with it, but assuming permission without asking is disrespectful and risks damaging the relationship. A quick message explaining what you would like to share and where is all it takes.
Track your learnings. After every wedding, note what went well and what did not. Was the venue too dark? Did the sharing flow cause confusion? Was the queue longer than expected? These notes become invaluable as you refine your process and prepare for future bookings. The operators who improve fastest are the ones who treat every event as a learning opportunity, not just a job.
A wedding 360 booth is not fundamentally different from any other event booth. What makes it different is the stakes. The couple trusts you with a piece of their day. Deliver on that trust and you will never be short of referrals.