Why have a wedding album?
I want to take you back to Spring 2017 - I was back home visiting my parents in Cambridgeshire, and my lovely friends and past clients Emily and Shane were visiting Emily’s parents, just a few doors down from where my parents live. We had realised this fine fate, and with their Sweden destination wedding coming up in August, we seized the opportunity to have a wedding meeting to go over their styling and ideas and most importantly the logistics and running order of the day. My Mum was thrilled to hear Emily and Shane’s plans (having known Emily since she was young) and loved asking questions about the dress, the food and all the other details. It wasn’t long before she went rummaging upstairs to pull out her wedding album from the mid 1970s, to show Emily and Shane exactly what my parents did for their wedding. We all poured over the album for the next hour, laughing at the awful fashions, the bad haircuts, but most of all experiencing the joy of weddings and the precious feeling of discovering photos through a physical photo album.
For me, photo albums are pure magic. It’s the texture of the pages, the sound of the binding moving as you turn the page, it’s the discovery of a different era, the guessing who is who, the commenting on how much younger everyone in your family looked back then but most of all, it’s the joy of shared experience and storytelling.
So it may not come as a surprise to you that I am here today to talk to you about the value of wedding albums, and more to the point, professionally made wedding albums.
Wedding albums are something that you look at over and over again. They are precious keepsakes. You will show them to friends and relatives, you’ll get them out on your anniversaries and you’ll eventually show your children. And your grandchildren. Is looking at your photos on your screen the same as holding them in your hands? Do you feel the same charm and nostalgia as an old photo album? Will Facebook even be around when your Grandchildren are born?
Photographs are made to be experienced. As your photographer, I am recording your story and I am photographing with your album in mind. I am capturing the crescendo moments that deserve a full page spread, and the quieter moments that fill the pages in between. I am creating the documents that when your flowers have dried and you’ve finally made it through your wedding cake, will remain with you over the years to come. A wedding album will add permanence to your photographs and will create something to gather around and tell stories from for the rest of your days on this earth.
Now, I’ll be the first to agree that professionally made photo albums don’t come cheap, and I totally get that everyone has a wedding budget and the thought of adding another £300+ to your allocated photography budget is a bit scary. That’s why it can be so tempting to save the pounds and make your own wedding album, be it a traditional album where you glue prints in, or an online photo book which you design yourself. Remember this can be a false economy. Often the pages are thin, the glue becomes unstuck and the print quality isn’t going to show off your photos in all their glory. That’s if you even manage to get round to it when the honeymoon period has worn off and life is bringing all the business it usually brings. Your wedding photos have been taken by a professional photographer, so give the work to them, and do your wedding photos justice and get them printed professionally.
And it’s worth remembering you don’t have to pay for an album straight away, you can choose to have your wedding album made 6 months or more down the line when cash is flowing again, or you could decide to put some of your wedding present money towards an album, or even ask for it as a wedding present in the first place.
To invest in a wedding album is to invest in past memories and future experiences. It’s to invest in the experience of discovery for your descendants. It’s to invest in love and it’s to invest in longevity. It’s to choose to preserve your stories.
So what do you think? Are you married and did you make the decision to get a wedding album? Or are you currently looking for your wedding photographer? Are you considering an album? I’d love to hear your thoughts, you can comment down there or send me an email by clicking below!