Today I’d like to talk to you about wedding albums. A lot of the things I talk about on the blog are experiences and information I pick up as a wedding blogger, or as  a wedding planner, or through talking to my industry friends. Other things are from my experience as a bride and today’s topic is one of those.

As you know I got married in Ibiza, my wedding photography is still a bone of contention, and something I would SO go back and change if I could. I really wasn’t prepared for how important the wedding photography was going to be for me after the wedding, and for that reason I just didn’t do enough research or allocate enough of our budget to this area. For this reason I am now unhappy with our photographs. I realise I talk about photography a lot on the blog and this is probably the reason, I don’t want you to make the same mistakes I did!

After deciding a month before our wedding that getting a friend with a good camera to take the photos wasn’t our best laid plans, we got a couple of recommendations of Ibiza based photographers and went with the cheapest. We booked a 6 hour digital only package……Big Mistake.

The 6 hours didn’t include any of the wedding once the sun went down, which meant we had to rely on our rather drunk guest to take photos of our beautiful candle lit villa… the results were not good! The digital only package didn’t give us any sort of album, just a disc of images to take back to the UK and do what we wanted with!

It was about 6 months later that I regretted this decision and wish we had gone for an album package. So today I want to talk to you about the importance of a wedding album.

Now I know photography can seem like a BIG expense when you first start planning your wedding, BUT an investment in a good photographer and the right photographer is money well spent; believe me I really wish I’d spent more.

I am all for choosing a photographer who lets you have the images on a disc so you can print away to your heart’s content and have a copy of all the images, BUT a good album is so important. Why?? Well I shall tell you

An album is what you will look at time and time again, you will get the album out and show relatives and friends. You will get it out on anniversaries and look through the pages, you will show your children and in years to come you will show your grand children. Looking at the images via disc on your computer or i-pad just isn’t the same. Discs won’t last forever, they get lost, scratched, broken and with technology moving as fast as it is who is to say how long we will be able to use them for? You may decide to make up your own wedding album with the disc. I did this and the results aren’t great. I made 2 albums. Album 1) I got a select few printed out from a leading photography shop, quite large and popped them in a  big album, you know the ones with the tissue paper in between. Yes they look OK, but the photos have already come unglued and the quality of the images isn’t  as good as it would have been from a professional album. Album 2) I designed my own album via an online photo book maker, you know the ones where you can design the background, the cover and add as many images as you like per page. This album is bad! I managed to get 300 images in one book, never a good idea. The book looks cluttered and badly designed and the image quality is poor. I have seen lots of these books and to be honest none have ever looked that great. Photo books are a fab idea for holidays, or birthdays but for a wedding album, honestly leave it to the professionals You hired a professional to take the photos so why not hire a professional to print the photos? Your photographer will be able to print out the images into a book at a high quality that will do the original photo justice.

Cost of an album

Now I know there a many of you out there on a  budget and you may feel a wedding album is just one more thing to add to the ever-growing wedding budget. Albums can start at as little as £350 and go up to as much as you want to spend, depending on the size, make and how many pages you choose. The average spend is more like £550 – £700.  The beauty of the album is it’s something you  can order once the wedding is over, so not something you have to pay for straight away. You can choose the album 6 months after the wedding, with some photographers allowing a year to choose and pay for one. Why not consider using some of you wedding present money to put towards the album?

I asked a couple of photographers what they thought

‘I think photographs are meant to be experienced. Some of my fondest childhood memories involve rummaging through old boxes of photos. It wasn’t just the content of the photos that I loved – but the entire experience of discovery. What would I look at next? What would I uncover? If two photos were stuck together, I would carefully prize them apart so I could discover what lay hidden away. It was the smell of the paper and the brittle feeling in my hands. It was the yellowing corners and the names scribbled on the back in biro.
When you buy a wedding album – you are buying the experience that your children, grandchildren (and even ancestors!) will have with your memories. They will flip the pages and debate who was who. They will laugh at the fashions and marvel at how much they looked like you. This is just not the same when you are viewing photos on your computer or television screen. It all becomes image – you miss the experience.’
Jaye  - Tux and Tales Photography

‘In my opinion you just can’t compare an image on screen to a professionally printed image… there’s something about seeing it on paper, being able to touch it, having something physical in your hands. Seeing that finished product is magic and for me, well obviously I love to see my images printed in a beautiful handcrafted album. I know that it is going to be treasured and brought out at family gatherings. proudly shown off to friends and eventually passed down to the next generation so they can laugh at (and eventually copy) the fashions.  I chose about 70 images for my own album – I never even look at the rest that are sitting on a disc.  In fact it’s been almost 6 years, I don’t know if the disc even works any more… I think I backed them up somewhere… but I have my album, so I’m happy.  If you are considering an album most photographers will let you order up to a year after the wedding so all the big expenses are paid. Heck, get one for your first anniversary… it IS ‘paper’!’
Claire  - Claire Penn Photography

 

So what do you think? Are you married and did you choose to buy an album from your photographer? Or did you make the decision to only have a disc package? Are you currently looking into photography for your wedding? Have you considered an album? Or if you are a photographer – what are your thoughts on wedding albums, do you offer just a disc only or an album package? What do you find is the most popular these days? I’d love to hear any thoughts you have on the subject!

 

Photo Credits: Tux and Tales Photography,  Claire Penn Photography,   Jay Mountford Photography     

 

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