The Montage Photo Guide
How to choose, organize, and send montage photos for Chicago weddings and mitzvahs so your film looks great and arrives on time.
Start here: what you're actually building
A montage is about 125 photos and runs 5 to 7 minutes, because each photo holds the screen for roughly two and a half to three seconds. More photos does not make a better montage. It makes each photo smaller in the story, and it is the single most common reason a room stops looking up. The cap is a feature.
The section formula
Bar/Bat Mitzvah: Growing Up 15 · Siblings 15 · Family 15 · Extended Family 15 · Hobbies and Activities 20 · Friends 35 · Finale 10 (= 125)
Wedding: One partner's childhood 15 · The other partner's childhood 15 · Families 20 · Friends 25 · The two of you 40 · Finale 10 (= 125)
These are starting points, not rules. Shift the counts to match the story — just keep the total near 125.
How to choose within a section
- One photo per moment. If you have eight shots from the same birthday, pick the one where the faces read best.
- Faces big in the frame. A wide beach shot with two specks in it disappears on a screen across a ballroom.
- Include the people who will be in the room. The best moments in any montage are when someone sees themselves.
- Spread the years. Five photos from age four and nothing from age nine leaves a gap the room notices.
- Skip near-duplicates. Two nearly identical frames back to back read as a stutter.
Sending photos so they actually look good
- Send originals. Do not text them to us and do not screenshot them — texting compresses a photo to a fraction of its resolution, and it will look soft on a big screen.
- Use a Google Drive folder, Dropbox link, or shared album.
- Old, low-resolution photos are fine — they read as vintage and they belong in the story. What does not work is a good photo that has been through several rounds of compression.
- Vertical phone photos are fine.
- Physical prints: let us scan them for a scanning fee. Do not photograph a print with your phone.
How to organize the folder
- One folder per section, named so they sort in order: 01_Growing_Up, 02_Siblings, and so on.
- Inside a folder, we sequence chronologically unless filenames tell us otherwise — number the filenames if a specific order matters.
- Add a "Must Include" folder for the handful that absolutely have to make the cut.
Music
- One song per section: five songs on Classic, up to eight on Premium.
- If it is playing at the party, pick clean or radio edits.
- Avoid tracks with an abrupt tempo change in the middle — they fight the cuts.
- Send song picks along with the photos, not after. Swapping a song once the first draft exists means re-timing every cut in that section, which is why it carries a song-swap fee and why we ask for song picks up front.
The deadline
- Everything is due 4 weeks before the event date.
- Production takes 3 weeks from the day the last photo arrives — not from the day you booked.
- Materials that arrive after the 4-week deadline carry a rush fee, and inside 2 weeks of the event we cannot guarantee the montage is ready.
Quick checklist
- Photos picked (about 125)
- Photos sorted into section folders
- Originals sent — not screenshots
- Must-includes flagged
- One song chosen per section
- Everything sent 4 weeks out
Ready to tell the story? Check availability or explore Ever After Montages and Mitzvah Montages.