WAHOOO!!!! I’M GETTING MARRIED THIS MONTH!!! 🙂
Yep, at the end of this month I will be a married woman and, useless as we both are, we’re finally getting our act together! With most of the decorations and accessories bought I’ve begun to allow my mind to wander to a hitherto forbidden place of thought: What will happen after the wedding? As it turns out the day itself is not the end of the wedding purchases!
Surprisingly enough my wedding photographs are unbelievably important to me… yup…who knew?! 😉 So I thought I’d take a look at the options for the finest in Wedding Albums to display those all important piccies!
Being a wedding photographer I do have something of a head start in this area and have spent years searching for the very finest wedding albums available from around the world to provide to my clients. Of course some of this is always going to be a matter of taste and I naturally choose the albums that I believe to be of the highest quality and most beautiful design. Whilst you can of course pick up a photo album for next to nothing in high street shops I really feel strongly that your wedding photographs are so important that they should be stored in a binding worthy of the occasion. After all, why spend thousands on a top wedding photographer if you’re not going to show them off properly!
I also think it’s so important that your wedding album isn’t going to be something that goes out of style… photographs are there to be looked at as well as treasured and I think they should always be around on a coffee table ready to stun your guests and share a happy memory! The last thing you want is a book you feel you have to hide away and never show anyone. Fashions may come and go but your wedding pictures are there forever!
So, here are my personal faves:
The Jorgensen Pro-Bound Album
I always think of this as a very homely album; a modern twist on a classic style with its quality leather binding, thick page mounts and luxurious all round quality it just looks like it would fit so perfectly in the big family living room to one day pick up and show to the grandkids!
Jorgensen are an Australian based album-maker and considered one of the best in the world so don’t expect to pick one up on the cheap, but they’re definitely worth it!! The album itself has very large sheets pages with a central split and typically comes in a lovely display box to keep it nice and safe… gorgeous!
Folio Lay-flat Fine-art Albums
Folio have become an extremely popular choice for wedding albums and they produce some brilliant contemporary designs that I just love. The lay flat album is designed to produce an invisible seam so that your pictures spread perfectly across both pages of the album. It’s a great effect and a little different from the classic traditional wedding album with a real ‘wow’ factor! The double page spread also gives you the chance to see your pictures really big in a way that was much more difficult to display in the days of film photography.
Folio are a British company and again hand-make their albums to the photographer’s specifications. They use incredibly high quality inks to show off all your images as they were intended and, as with each of the albums they come in a really lovely, high quality presentation box… stunning.
Queensberry Duo
I think my personal favourite has to be the Queensberry Duo album. The album just oozes quality and it’s such a chic, stylish album that you’re just desperate to show it off! Queensberry albums are hugely sought-after and massively respected by top international photographers so if your budget can stretch to it these are an incredible way to show off your wedding photographs for the rest of your lives!
The duo album is so called because it combines matted and flush-mount pages to give a modern layout to a timeless exterior. The pages are edgeless, giving you the option of a full-page print of your images, stylish white borders or a double-page spread. The front can be finished in a range of materials from silk to leather giving you the choice in just how contemporary a look you’re after! These really are beautiful albums!
We were so pleased to recently have our photographs (including the one featured here) of an album we created for one of our couples featured on the Queensberry blog this week which you can see here!
So there you have my top picks, but if these aren’t your style then my main piece of advice would be to make sure you take the time to find something that’s right for you and that is going to last you a lifetime! Many photographers will let you take your images on disk initially and get your album printed later so you can always save up to get the right album for you. All of the albums above are expensive, but don’t forget they’re also a treasure-trove of all important memories!
