Album Design Process

If you have an album included in your wedding collection, or if you’re adding one after the fact – congrats! There is no better way to showcase your wedding, and I absolutely love working with you to create a completely unique photo story of your day. My aim with the wedding album is to create a design that will enable future generations to experience how your wedding day looked and, more importantly, how it felt. A great album should tell the story of the day through the little moments that happened, and showcase the beautiful details that you put so much time into creating. It can also serve as a record of who the important players are at this point in your life.

As you begin to choose the images for your album, I recommend focusing on the important moments and feelings that your photos evoke. I think a lot of couples go into the process with a checklist of photos that should be included (family formals, cake cutting, first dance, etc.) rather than looking at the bigger picture of how did we feel? Who were we celebrating with? What was the emotion during the ceremony?

Choosing Images for Your Album

There are three options for choosing images; whichever way you go, you will have a full round of revisions in which you can switch out any images you like.
1. creative design: I choose all the photos for a creative, clean design telling the story of the day; results in the most cohesive design
2. full choice: you choose all of the images, up to 75 photos total, and I design around these photos; least cohesive in terms of storytelling and design
3. creative highlights: you choose your very favorite photos (up to 20 images) and I weave them into the wedding story; most popular choice, and second best in terms of design.

I recommend Option 1 or Option 3 as these will result in the cleanest design and best story-telling in your wedding album.  You will have one round of revisions whichever way you go, so if I include any images that you don’t like as much, you can choose to switch them out.  The most popular option is Option 3, where you choose your absolute favorite images only (up to 20 images).

Please note that after the initial complimentary round of changes, additional changes are billed at $100 per round.

Last year I designed a complete album from scratch for a couple who just couldn’t narrow down the images to 75 favorites.  I put together the design and they changed out a few photos, and they now have an album they adore but just couldn’t envision themselves.  I really like working this way as it results in a very strong design.

Creating a Collection of Favorite Images

The easiest way to let me know your favorite images is to create a “favorites” collection in your online gallery.  I’ll provide instructions for creating a favorites collection if you need help.  Please ensure that you “send to photographer” once you’ve completed your favorites collection, then shoot me a quick email to let me know to look out for it (occasionally I don’t receive an automated notification email).

Adding Additional Pages

If you’re having a hard time narrowing down your image choices – or if you just want a more complete story of your wedding day – you will likely want to purchase additional album pages. The pricing for additional pages can be found on page one of your contract, or email me if you’d like current rates. When sending me your image choices, please indicate if you’d like me to stick to the number of pages included in your initial collection investment (usually 30 pages, or 15 spreads) or if you would prefer me to create the best possible design for your wedding day.  You will have the option to choose which of any additional pages you’d like to purchase, and which you’d rather not invest in.

Most couples allow me to create my ideal version of their album, then choose a few spreads to remove if necessitated by budget.