DIY Wedding: How to Make Photo Collages for Your Wedding Reception

Many couples enjoy having photos to show at their wedding reception that chronicle their lives over the years, both photos of them before they met, and photos of them during different stages of their relationship. If your wedding reception site is not friendly for showing a computerized slideshow, you could instead make photo collage boards to post at the reception and allow wedding guests to view at their leisure.

Wedding Reception Photo Collage: Decide on a Format

There are a number of different ways to display photos at a wedding reception, and you will have to choose which one suits you best. The most basic way is to buy poster board and either tape, clue, or pin photos to it. This is probably the easiest method because there is not much artistic skill involved.

Another option that makes a more easily remembered collage is to put together scrapbook pages. These pages can then be fastened to poster board for the reception, and then later collected into one scrapbook album for the couple to keep.

More creative formats exist as well, such as making a photo mobile that can hang from the ceiling (or from trees if the reception is outdoors). These mobiles can be fashioned out of metal coat hangers and string, or ribbons to match the wedding color scheme.

Wedding Reception Photo Collage: Gather Photos

This is where the parents come in handy, because they are sure to have lots of photos of you as a child. Have them pick out some favorites and send them to you (or pick them yourself if you have easy access). It is good to have a balance of photos at different ages, both alone and with siblings, family, and friends. If you have photos of the happy couple together as younger children, those are sure to please wedding guests.

You should also have some photos of you and your soon-to-be-spouse together at different stages of your relationship. If you don't have many, ask your friends, or check facebook. Beware that facebook photos are low resolution and don't look great on prints, so you can email the owner and ask for the full resolution copy of that photo if you would like a better quality print.

Wedding Reception Photo Collage: Enlist the Mothers

This wedding reception photo collage is a great project for moms to take care of. Before putting a lot of work into it, talk with your mothers and see if this is something they would be interested in. You can give them as little or as much guidance as you want, and regardless, they are sure to turn out something good. You may have to help them by providing some more recent photos if they don't have access to those.

If your moms haven't met each other yet, but will be in the same location before the wedding, this is a great project for them to work on together to get to know each other. They will have a blast looking through photos and swapping stories about you, and will probably end up giggling together like little girls.