Monday, August 16, 2010

Wed-cap: Wedding Album

When it came time to put together our wedding album we decided it would be more economical to create one ourselves rather than buy one from our photographer. With all the many photo websites out there I decided to go with Shutterfly which is also the site we used to create a personal wedding website with all of our wedding pictures uploaded for our guests to view and order prints from.

Since all the photos were already uploaded on Shutterfly it made the most sense to create a photobook on that site. It was very user friendly, once you upload all the pictures you want you have the option of having the site create pages using the layouts they think are best however you can change any of the layouts and pictures as you see fit. Having the site make the initial layouts made it much easier for me to design each page and customize it rather than trying to visualize each page from scratch.

The pricing was also very reasonable especially when compared to a professional, photographers album which can easily range in the $500 or more category. I was able to order a full 12x12 hard cover album with 100 pages for around $140. I ordered the album during one of their 30% off sales and got free shipping. I was also able to order a smaller, identical album for my mom which she loved.

I was so excited when it arrived (in less than a week after ordering). The quality was great and it looked even better in person. The whole process took me about a week to create, I spent several hours each evening on it but had a lot of fun choosing the pictures and figuring out the layouts.

My mother in law also made a wedding album of our pictures using Shutterfly. Hers is a bit different with the pictures and layouts she chose and most notably in that she wrote captions for all the pictures which I did not do. I'm not good at that kind of thing but it's nice to have an album out there with everyone's names listed so that in 30 years we can remember who everybody is!

Below is a link to the whole album for anyone that is interested in checking it out. I have to say I'm pretty proud of it.



Since the album is 100 pages long and I know not everyone will be interested in looking at the whole thing below is a collage of some of my most favorite photos from the day.


Did/Will you create your own wedding album? Which site did/will you use?




**All photos in the album and collage are courtesy of Bruce Best Photography **

6 comments:

Heather said...

I love Shutterfly and plan to use it to create an album with our engagement photos and other wedding photos in addition to the pro album we’re getting from our photographer. Designing albums is so much fun, and I can’t wait to share ours once they are ready! I love the collage page you created.

Born to be Mrs. Beever said...

I used them to create our album which I have set to share in a post in 2 days :) I love yours...I looked through the whole thing. Mine is about 8 or 9 pages less than yours. I highly encourage people to use this type of service. It did take me a long time to add all the photos and get them all organized and cropped and such but it was fun to create it exactly as I wanted. I did mix up the colors and backgrounds in mine a bit and added a little bit of text here and there. Can't wait to share mine :)

bananas. said...

love it!!! shutterfly is the best. i wanted to make a photo book last year but it cost over 100 and it wasn't even for my wedding day. hahaha! oh well...now i know where to go.

BonBon Rose Girls Kristin said...

I am so terrible. It's over three years later and I've yet to make one. But I really want to make a photo book!

beka said...

We did, using My Publisher, and made two similar photobooks for each of our moms (their respective books had more pictures of their own family members/friends while ours had both sides included). I loved designing the book even though it took several hours... Yours looks great!

Liss said...

A big hello from Sydney, Australia.
Just wanted to say that your wedding was beautiful and I love your album.
Also, your wedding shoes were great, im looking for some just like them.
Congratulations!