Following many threads on social media and wedding forum web sites, I repeatedly have come across the question of where to go with your photos if you want to make your own wedding photo album. One common advice is to go to blurb, Shutterfly or other photo book makers. Also, it is often noted that many wedding photo album makers, like Queensberry, do only business with photographers. But should you really get a photo book for your wedding photo album? This article is trying to highlight the pros and contras of photo books in comparison to proper wedding photo albums.
There are several reasons in favor of wedding photo album. For starters, they are easily available. You can chose between a multitude of different providers, they come cheap with prices starting from 10 Dollars and they are delivered very quickly with e.g. blurb delivering most books within 7 to 10 business days after ordering. Proper wedding photo albums on the other hand are much harder to get your hands on. It is true that a lot of firms do only business with photographers and other wholesale customers. Prices are considerably higher and delivery times vary from 2 weeks to 6 months.
Also, if you want to make your own design, photo book companies often provide a design software, which allows you to put together a simple album layout within minutes. Often the software has an integration into the ordering process, so after designing it is a piece of cake to upload your photos and submit your order. Wedding photo album makes usually don't provide this feature for two reasons: often the companies are too small to develop their own software and in most cases those programs are not sufficient to create the sophisticated layout design required for a real wedding photo album.
If your photographer provides you with your wedding photo album you will not need to make any more choices for the main album. If you receive a digital copy of your photographer's pictures you will need to choose how to print these pictures. High quality prints of your picture can be inserted in a standard wedding album. There are many different quality levels of albums that you can purchase. There are many different styles of wedding albums that you can find on the internet. If you want to have a printed photo book then you need to decide on a printer, the quality, and sizes and prices of the photo books available.
