Guest-generated wedding photography

If formal wedding line ups make you want to hurl and paying a couple of grand for a wedding photographer seems just a little too much, then there are other ways to create fabulous wedding photography…

Bring on the DIY photo booth – it’s like the disposable camera thing, but with an upgrade.

Hang up a back drop with a drape and a piece of cord, and there you have your very own photo booth for guests.

Guests at Nathalie and Corey's wedding wrote messages on a little chalkboard

With the aid of a digital camera on a tripod and a piece of string you can create your very own Helmut Newton style photo machine, in which guests trigger the shutter and flash with either a camera radio remote or a camera remote control cable.

For the ultimate wedding snaps

Encourage curtseys and bows at your home made photo booth

To encourage true silliness with the guests, set up a laptop so they can review their shots. This does get a little more complicated, but luckily here’s a tutorial on setting up your own photo booth. And here‘s how another couple did it.

And for ultimate dumb guest behaviour create speech bubbles for guests to write messages on.

And finally, once you’ve got millions of amazing user-generated shots, print your own album by uploading it to a digital photo book maker like Bob books.

Upload your own photos to create your own photo book at Bob Books

Amazing wedding photography without the price tag

Here’s how to make your wedding photographs achingly beautiful on the cheap:

1. Rope in friends for an hour each. Nominate friends to take photos for different sections of the day. That way no one gets lumbered with all the responsibility, and they’re likely to concentrate for their section.

2. Make everyone jump. In every photo. All day. Even the elderly. Smiling is passe, jumping is very 2009. Do it, you know it makes sense.

Jump to it

3. Find a photography student to hire for the day. There’s a good chance they’ll be more talented than your average wedding photographer.

4. Disposable cameras are a handy addition, but not really something to be totally relied on.

5. Polaroid cameras are far better, though a bit pricier.

Polaroids

6. Get a photobooth. Or, make your own Helmut Newton style self portrait machine.

Hire a photo booth

7. DIY super 8. Get a friend to do a super 8 film for you. It’s pretty easy to operate if you’re doing daytime filming, and even the most amateur operator can create a sense of wobbly nostalgia.

Super 8 films

8. Sod it and get a decent photographer. Someone told me the one thing they regretted in their wedding was not getting a photographer, because all you’re left with are the memories.

20% off photographer, Lyndsey Goddard

Today Credit Crunch Bride comes bearing gifts. Well, ok, not gifts exactly, but definitely 20% off discounts.

Mid action, naturalistic shots express the couple's personalities

Lyndsey Goddard is a London-based photographer who travels all over. Her forte is capturing naturalistic moments, real smiles and quirky details, which give you a sense of what the day was really like.

There's something Virgin Suicides about this shot

Simply mention Credit Crunch Bride when you book this wonderful photographer to receive 20% off her normal ‘off the peg’ price of £950.

Not a forced smile in sight

Unlike some photographers, she doesn’t do that sneaky thing of holding you to ransom over the prints. Instead she gives you a disc with all your pictures on, so you can get as many photos printed as you like. Plus, you get a hardback coffee table book with all your pictures beautifully laid out in it, which is the icing on the cake, in my book.

Lovely shallow depth of field, interesting composition - these are the things that make hiring a photographer worth it.

A nostalgic, dreamy feel