The Truth About Wedding Albums

Since I was a bride once, although it was in 2005, I thought I would share my wedding album experience with you all:-)  Back then, I was just getting interested in photography and definitely not a professional yet.  My good friend Meredith, who actually helped push me on my way to photography, was a film photographer at the time and had done a number of our friends' weddings.  I knew she would do an amazing job and she ended up doing the photography and film as our wedding gift.  She shot in both color film and black and white film, which I so love the look of b/w film and the pictures turned out great.  A few weeks after our wedding I had all the film developed and thankfully, I had all the film made into digital files on cd so I would have those as well.  Then, I of course spent hours creating this amazing album to remember our wedding by right?  WRONG! We had to unpack all our gifts, get caught up at home after being on our honeymoon for a week, recover from wedding planning, and start our life together.  Life just got so busy and I HATE scrapbooking, I literally would rather die.  Since it was film, I actually do have all the 4x6 proofs of everythhing and I had a few 5x7s and 8x10s made but, up until a few days ago this is what I had to tell our wedding story:

4 cds of pictures that were doing me no good but just sitting in a box in the closet.  Fast forward 7 years to 2012 and that's still what they were doing.  My husband David has even said "we don't even have an album from our wedding like your brides do", and he said that a couple years ago, so I decided that this was the year that I was going to actually do one for us, and I did for our 7th anniversary.  Now, keep in mind I have had my amazing graphic artist Clay, on staff now for about 3.5 years so I have someone to design it for me and it still took me this long!  A lot of the wedding magazines tell you to get your high res images and you can make an album on your own, or that you don't need one.  Well, you can make a book online from a consumer type lab but the print color will fade over time and they are mostly press printed books, not photo quality archival paper that are made to stand the test of time.  But, like me, most of you are going to get busy with life and aren't going to do anything with those digital images.  They are going to sit there on the cd doing you no good.  So what will you have?  When you are 65 are you going to sit your grandkids down and show them your wedding pictures on facebook?  Probably not.  Who knows what will be around then!  You're either going to pull out your album and relive the funny things that happened, details, and all your loved ones who were there, or you are going to wish you could because you don't have an album to show them.  In our family pictures in our album, both David and I have Aunts that were very dear to us that aren't with us anymore.  David's Aunt Faye, who is his only Aunt and my Aunt Carol who was like my 2nd mom both passed away from cancer just a couple years after our wedding.  But, we have them and our fond memories of them in our album.  When are you thinking about your wedding photography and what you have left after, really consider a photographer who does these types of custom, gorgeous albums, even it isn't us, although I hope it is:-)  It is so worth it and you will be so happy you did!  I can now say that I have one finally!  I had the design finished for our anniversary on July 3rd to surprise David, and just got our finished product in the mail a couple days ago.  Our colors were light blue and ivory/peach so I did a blue leather with a band of silver that looked very nice with a b/w picture of us on the cover.  Here's what our finished design looks like so you can flip through and also some pics of it on our coffee table! 

Comments

[Andi Diamond]

Aren't you SO GLAD you finally did this? I know David is! What you said is so true, Carrie. I look at my album with Pete and with Ethan alot and it makes me so happy. I love it- and that was 10 years ago already! Just wait until you have kids- then you will face the same dilemma all over again! I still dont have images from Emory's newborn session on my walls- and she just turned ONE! I have it all drawn out and the images selected....but yes life gets in the way. Us photographers are the shoe makers with holes in our own shoes!

[Carrie]

I am SO glad, and I never would have if I didn't have Clay!!!! I totally agree!