Do-It-Yourself Photo Montage for Your Wedding or Special Event

You’ve seen them at countless weddings and special events, a photo “love story” or “history” set to music and played on a big screen, often called a photo montage. In days past, a photo montage cost hundreds of dollars and was produced at professional video and photography studios. Now, thanks to inexpensive software and powerful home computers, the average person can produce their own photo montage and burn it to CD or DVD.

Numerous programs are available for purchase and many even come with the software bundled on your computer or with your camera. Most of these programs are easy to use, simply drag and drop the photos onto the timeline, specify a transition and timing, add music and narration and export your photo montage to disc. Not only can you show the photo montage on a big screen (provided you burned it to video or disc), you can make screensavers as well.

When creating a photo montage to show at a wedding or a special event, it’s best to keep it short and simple. Even if you have shoeboxes and a hard drive full of photos, it doesn’t mean you have to show them all.

For a love story style photo montage, you will want to show pictures from both the bride and the groom’s childhoods, pictures of them together and finally end with a picture of their wedding invitation or engagement announcement. Be picky. Choose the photos that best illustrate the personalities of the couple. If the groom is a college football player, it might be cute to include a picture of him as a toddler holding a football, or of the bride as a toddler dressed in a cheerleader outfit.

If you see a theme as you go through the pictures, you might want to take advantage of it and play it up in the photo montage. For example, suppose the bride has a bunch of photos of herself wearing various boots. You could make a little scene set to Nancy Sinatra’s “These boots are made for walking” song. That’s just a silly little example but be open to the possibilities that might present themselves.