Photo Booth Rentals in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Rooms where Philadelphia actually throws parties

Philadelphia has two kinds of event room, and which one you pick decides how you hire a booth. The big ballroom houses run all inclusive: in house catering, a coordinator on staff, and a preferred vendor list an outside booth has to be cleared against. The Fishtown and Kensington conversions are open vendor, and there the constraint is the street rather than the contract (narrow blocks, no loading dock, and a parking fight at four o’clock on a Saturday). Five rooms local booth crews work constantly:

• Crystal Tea RoomCenter City / Wanamaker Building

  Finley Catering’s ballroom on the ninth floor of the Wanamaker Building, with crystal chandeliers, columns and room for roughly 900. The largest formal room downtown, and because you enter through a working retail building, booth gear rides a service elevator on the venue’s schedule rather than yours.

• Vie by CescapheNorth Broad Street

  A 1910 industrial building at 600 N. Broad turned into 12,500 sq ft of ballroom: 25 foot ceilings, a 60 foot crystal chandelier, an urban courtyard, and up to 800 seated. Cescaphe runs its rooms as a full service house, so get it in writing that an outside booth is allowed, and where it may stand, before the deposit.

• Front & PalmerFishtown

  A former barrel factory at Front and Palmer taking about 220 for a seated dinner and 325 plus for cocktails, catered by Feast Your Eyes. The friendliest load in of this group, and the room most often booked by couples who want to choose every vendor themselves.

• The Franklin InstituteLogan Square

  The Benjamin Franklin Memorial holds about 600 for a reception or 340 seated, with the Fels Planetarium and a rooftop deck alongside. Galas load in after the museum closes to the public, so booth crews quote a later and much tighter install window than they would at a ballroom.

• Penn MuseumUniversity City

  The Chinese Rotunda sits under a 90 foot dome and takes around 600, and the museum hosts one wedding at a time, so the building is effectively yours for the evening. Booth placement is agreed around the galleries, which here is a real negotiation rather than a formality.

Philadelphia planners who hire booth vendors

Philadelphia is a small enough market that planners and booth vendors know each other by name, so a planner’s shortlist is the fastest route to someone who has already worked your room. Three firms based in the city:

• Evantine Design

  Thirty five years of Philadelphia event design and production from 7500 Wheeler St., led by president and creative director Brian Kappra. Opening celebrations for the Barnes Foundation, the Rodin Museum and the Kimmel Center, plus society weddings and corporate galas. Design and production rather than day of coordination.

• Truly You Events

  Christiane Lehman’s boutique planning firm at 1530 Locust St. in Center City, offering full service through month of coordination and deliberately taking one wedding per weekend.

• La Rue Events

  A Philadelphia planning, styling and design studio with more than a decade in the market, working the luxury and destination end of the city’s weddings alongside smaller coordination packages.

The Philadelphia booking calendar

October is the hardest month to book anything in Philadelphia. The city then adds a second squeeze most people forget: regional proms and the Penn, Drexel and Temple graduation weekends land in a three week block in late spring, and they absorb exactly the vendors weddings are competing for.

• Hardest dates of the yearSeptember and October

  Fall Saturdays. Venues book 12 to 18 months out and the best reviewed booth vendors follow within weeks of that, so a year of notice is normal rather than cautious.

• The prom and graduation blockMid May to mid June

  Suburban proms plus university commencement weekends. Weekday availability thins out too, which is unusual for this market.

• Corporate holiday runLate November and December

  Center City office parties, mostly locked in by September. December weeknights go before December Saturdays do.

• Best valueJanuary to March

  Genuinely quiet once New Year’s Eve clears. The most negotiating room of the year, and the only window where a six week booking is realistic.

How far a Philadelphia vendor will drive

Philadelphia vendors quote a tri state radius as a matter of course, because the metro crosses into New Jersey and Delaware inside twenty miles either way. A travel fee usually appears past the second ring of suburbs:

• King of Prussia, Montgomery County corporate and hotel ballroom work, about 20 miles up the Schuylkill.
• Cherry Hill, NJ, Straight over the Ben Franklin Bridge, and covered at city rates by most Philadelphia vendors.
• Wilmington, DE, About 30 miles down I-95, and a common overlap market for vendors in both states.
• Doylestown, Bucks County weddings, roughly 35 miles north. Usually quoted with a small travel charge.
• Media, Delaware County, close enough in that most vendors treat it as a city booking.

Photo booth rentals near Philadelphia