Photo Booth Hire in South London

Church halls, hotels and pubs: South London's venue mix

South London celebrates in a different kind of room from the centre. Croydon has the hotels and conference suites, Sutton, Carshalton and Wallington have church halls, cricket and bowls clubs and school halls, Clapham, Brixton and Streatham have pubs with function rooms, bars and railway-arch venues, and the Surrey edge around Purley and Coulsdon has village halls and golf clubs. Dulwich and Norwood add the odd Georgian house and private school hall.

The practical consequence is that no two bookings look alike: one Saturday might be a 200-guest hotel wedding with a goods lift, the next a 40th birthday in a first-floor pub room with a tight staircase. We ask about the room before recommending a booth so that the one that arrives is the one that fits.

Croydon to Clapham: the ground we cover

The South London area on this site covers the boroughs of Croydon, Sutton, Merton and Lambeth together with the southern half of Southwark. Within that we regularly work in Croydon, Purley, Coulsdon, Sutton, Carshalton, Wallington, Mitcham, Streatham, Brixton, Clapham, Dulwich, Norwood and Thornton Heath. Wimbledon and the western side of Merton are covered on our South West London page, and Surrey venues over the border in Caterham, Epsom or Banstead are on the Surrey page, though we reach both from the same roads.

Every venue in the area is a short run for our team along the A23, A24 or A3, with the M25 at junction 7 giving access to the Surrey side, and we are in the area most weekends through the wedding and party season.

Parking, the A23 and upstairs function rooms

The A23 through Croydon and Streatham and the A24 through Clapham and Tooting are the main routes in, and both slow down between four and seven in the evening, so we schedule arrival well ahead of the hire window. Hotels in Croydon have car parks and service entrances; pubs and bars in Clapham and Brixton rarely do, so we unload on the street or in a side road and move the van afterwards. Church halls and community centres almost always have somewhere to park.

Upstairs rooms are common in the area's pubs, and that matters for booth choice: the slim pods go up stairs, the Magic Mirror, Party Booth and Inflatable Booth do not, so they need a lift or a ground-floor room. ULEZ covers all of South London and is handled by us. Whatever the booth, we need one standard socket (two for the Inflatable) and 45 to 60 minutes of setup before the hire starts, which is never billed as hire time.

Planning a South London wedding, prom or party

Weddings in South London lean towards hotels in Croydon, pubs and bars in Clapham and Brixton for the evening do, and halls and golf clubs on the Surrey edge. Proms for schools in Croydon, Sutton and Lambeth run through late June and early July, usually in hotel function suites, and the Party Booth is a strong choice because teenagers queue happily for a curtained booth. Birthdays are year-round, with 18ths, 21sts and 40ths in pub rooms and children's parties in church halls.

Corporate Christmas parties centre on Croydon's hotels and the offices around East Croydon, and there is a growing run of office socials in Clapham and Brixton bars. Book December weekends early. A practical note for all of these: if the venue has a noise curfew or a midnight finish, tell us and we will plan pack-down to fit inside it.

Booths that suit a South London celebration

The LCD SlimPod is the most popular booth across South London because it fits the pub rooms and church halls that host so many of the area's parties: 36 centimetres wide, 1.5m by 2m of floor, one plug, and background removal that turns a plain hall wall into a backdrop of your choice. The Party Booth is next, an enclosed curtained booth that holds a crowd of eight and gives proms and birthday parties the privacy to be silly.

For weddings in a hotel ballroom or golf club, the Selfie Mirror Pod gives a mirror experience with a DSLR camera and instant prints for each guest on just 2m by 2m of floor, and the Magic Mirror steps up from there with animations and games for the room with space to spare.

• LCD SlimPod: pub function rooms, church and school halls
• Party Booth: proms and birthday parties
• Selfie Mirror Pod: hotel and golf club weddings in a compact space
• Magic Mirror: ballrooms with room to spare