Once your wedding day has come and gone, and now you’re on to (arguably) the most fun part of it all: sifting through and reminiscing over the wedding photos to relive your best day in print. You laugh, you cry, and after a few more viewings, you begin to earmark the chosen ones, your favorite ones, the wedding album ones. Your best wedding photos not only make for gorgeous custom thank you notes, but can also live on in a wedding album that’s built to last for years – and generations – to come. Just as there’s an art to capturing the wedding, there’s an art to assembling the perfect wedding album. With our custom wedding photo book ideas and tips, you’ll soon know how to create your dream wedding album so that you can relive your magical day forever.
Give the photos from your best day a home of their own in one of our professionally bound, easy to make, and truly personalized wedding albums or photo books. Designed to take your photos off your device and into your life, our collection spans from layflat photo albums to our hardcover, softcover, and wedding guestbook designs. Whether you’re creating a book to gift or keep yourself, our wedding photo albums tout quality that’s built to last.
Jump to:
- How To Design A Wedding Album
- Tips For The Perfect Wedding Album
- Wedding Album Layout Ideas
- Wedding Album Design Inspiration
- Wedding Album Quotes And Captions
How To Design A Wedding Album
A wedding day is brimming with emotion. From the moment the bride and groom start getting ready, to their romantic first look and all the way to the final toast of the night, your photographer is there to capture every detail. Once the big day has passed, a wedding album is a perfect way to encapsulate all these emotional moments and tell your wedding story with elegance. Making your own wedding album is such a fun post-wedding activity, but it can be a bit overwhelming to know where to begin. That’s why we’re here to keep the process as simple as possible with just these three easy steps.
1. Choose a photo book style and size
First, you choose your favorite wedding album type (professional flush mount album, premium layflat photo book, or standard hardcover books) and design style (size and cover type, such as leather or hardcover, as well as color).
2. Upload your final wedding photographs
Next, you upload your photos, using the favorites you’ve already selected or all the ones you receive from your photographer, having their designers select the ones they think are album-worthy. Add variety with a mix of both candid and posed pictures, plus photos of the custom wedding decor. Do your best to balance the lighting and colors and group them together for each page for optimal visual appearance.
3. Pick a layout method that’s perfect for you
Finally, you then select the layout method you prefer the most! There are three ways to make a photo book the way you want – totally DIY, using templates and pre-designed layouts, or using one of our services:
- Make My Book: Perfect for couples who need assistance with curating photos but want control over the size and style of the album.
- Custom Path: This is the way to go for creative and crafty couples who want complete control over the creation process, including layouts, style, and the embellishments within the book.
- Simple Path: This third option is the happy medium, a template that does the work for you but allows you to tweak with the final arrangements and add captions for that personal touch.
After adding the finishing touches (selecting features such as layflat pages, satin-finish paper, a dust jacket, or a gift box) and everything looks and feels just right, you can proceed to add the finished product to your cart and order away! For products that showcase a more refined selection of images, consider some of our personalized wedding gifts and photo prints.
Tips For The Perfect Wedding Album
After all of the planning that went into the big day and all of the fun that was had at the reception, it’s important to gather your favorite snapshots together in a way that beautifully commemorates the occasion. Creating your album is, yes, a tedious process, but it’s also one of the most rewarding parts of wedding planning. You’ll have a beautiful album for a lifetime.
Your instinct may be to jump right in, tear through your proofs, and immediately figure out what should go into your album. But slow down and follow our tips to skip some stressed-out feelings, and we promise you’ll have a picture-perfect book that tells a wonderful story.
Sort Wisely
The best place to start is by getting organized. Chances are, with the digital world we live in, all your photos are going to be files stored on your computer and mobile phone. So get them all onto the same device and make two folders – one that’s general wedding memories and one for your wedding album shortlist.
Group the photos into categories: getting ready, ceremony, cocktail hour, reception, special moments like the first look, the first kiss, cake cutting, speeches, candids, portraits, dancing, and the great send-off. Once you start filtering them through, it’ll make it easier to upload and also a great way to bring together all your pictures. Make sure you back them up too on a hard drive or USB so they are 100% safe and sound.
Pick A Theme
Is your wedding album going to have a theme? For example, you might just want a collection of all the most romantic moments from the day or the funniest! Do you want a traditional theme or something more modern? A theme can be a good idea if you’re really struggling to whittle down the number of photos to go in your album. A theme gives you focus.
Tell Your Story
Imagine you’re illustrating a book that has no text—keep the “story” of your day in mind. Chronologically is the most straightforward and sensible approach. That works nicely too because every time you open it, you’ll remember the entire day as it unfolded. But, it’s by no means the only way.
You could group your photos by subject – people, food, flowers, and styling (don’t forget to include photos of your wedding stationery or scan them in). Or be artsy and arrange your photos by color for a highly curated effect.
Take Your Time
Choosing photos for a wedding album takes six hours on average, so don’t expect it to be a quick task. You worked hard to plan your wedding—taking time to reflect on your fabulous photos is part of the payoff. But try not to lose momentum after the wedding. Make your initial selections (the 20 to 30 faves) even if you’re all wedding-ed out.
Think About Your Walls, Too
The prints that you put into your personalized wedding album can also make it onto your mantle or walls too. Pick from your favorite shots of the day, the ones you connect with most, and hang your beautiful wedding photos as personalized wall art like canvas prints, photo tiles, and posters.
Wedding Album Layout Ideas
If you fancy keeping your wedding album layout exactly the same from page to page, then it’s easy peasy. That’s a good idea if you like simplicity and uniformity. For variety though, you can use our photo book builder to change up the look on as many pages as you like. Once you’ve uploaded all of your photos, the choice is all yours. Switch between a couple of layout templates or try them all!
- Some people like to open with the blank page option – think of it as a moment to pause between the cover and diving straight in.
- At the other end is the full-bleed design where your image fills every inch of paper with no white border in sight – this one makes a big impact.
- Try little grids of three or four images for things like detail shots – stationery, rings, and buttonholes make a lovely trio.
- We also love the long landscape layout for foodie images where you can take in what the top table looked like laden with food, flowers, and candles.
- One way to make your album smooth yet dynamic is to choose meaningful transition shots. For example, a shot of the couple walking away from the ceremony venue holding hands might be a great transition into the reception portion of the album.
- You can also experiment with page layouts at this point. Some pages will feature one 8″x10″ portrait, while others will have a 5″x7″ staggered with smaller shots.
Wedding Album Design Inspiration
A huge part of your personalized wedding album is about way more than the photography. The look and feel of your book count for plenty. That’s why our photo book options cover all sorts of different styles and shapes, from softcover to hardcover, landscape to portrait, square if rectangles aren’t your thing, and a whole host of font options to cover every typography taste. You might be drawn to one specific look in a heartbeat, but if you’re on the fence, you can mock up your design with your photos and wording rather than decision-making with our template. It helps all of the puzzle pieces fall into place to help you find the one.
Modern couples tend to favor a photojournalistic style, emphasizing lots of candid shots, but make sure you have some formal posed shots too. Mixing black-and-white or sepia with color shots will also give your album a dynamic edge. Many photographers suggest a 1:3 black-and-white to color ratio, but anything goes. And don’t forget the details that give the album depth and flair, such as close-ups of flower arrangements, favors and food, and an overhead shot of the venue. For even more inspiration, check out our Contemporary Wedding Photo Book Ideas.
Wedding Album Quotes And Captions
A picture says a thousand words, or so the saying goes. That doesn’t mean to say that your wedding album should be without snippets of speech. Wedding album quotes dotted throughout are another design tip for adding doses of real meaning that will move you every time you flick through the pages. Below are some ideas for wedding album quotes and captions to include:
- If you’re stuck for words, have a rummage through your guestbook (if you had one) and type up some of the jotting-downs that made you laugh out loud or shed a tear.
- Another idea would be to take a line or two from the song lyrics of your first dance or from readings said during your ceremony. And don’t forget vows, especially if you wrote your own.
- If you’re a bit of a wordsmith, you could always include a caption for every single image, noting how you remember feeling at the time that photo was taken, or what you love most about the scene captured.
- Keep things understated but romantic with a photo of the two of you during one of the many candid moments, and a dreamy line like ‘The day we said we do’.
- Perhaps you want to keep people for within the pages, in which case, opt for a photo of the venue, the flowers, or your ring boxes (a popular shot in the wedding photographer world) with the wording stating the where and when. Or celebrate your wedding album for what it really is – a day that’s all about the two of you – and pick a photo that says L-O-V-E the loudest with your newlywed names beneath.
In honor of marriages everywhere, we’ve put together a list of the best marriage quotes to put in your personalized wedding photo book. Find meaningful wedding album quotes, messages, and sayings about love that captures everything special between you and your partner.
Wrapping Up
Your big day is one life event you’ll never want to forget. It’s a beautiful celebration where families and friends come together to witness the people they love pledge their lives to each other. While you might wish you could freeze this moment in time, a wedding photo album is one way you can enshrine this day in your heart forever. For more inspiration, check out our inspiring wedding album ideas that you can personalize to match your style and wedding or turn your favorite wedding photos into custom canvas prints for your home.
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