Wedding Albums- Question

[April20]

I''ve been married for 18 months and have been dragging my feet in ordering my wedding album (and copies of pictures too). I''ve just now sent the pictures we definitely want included in the album over to our photographer and she is going to create the spreads for us to approve. I''m not sure cost wise what to expect. What''s the average?

My other question is how many people actually order albums- and how quickly do they do so? My MIL had hers ordered and in hand within two months of the wedding and has taken it to every major event she''s attended since then (if I have one more random person tell me they''ve seen my photos....). I think the stubborn part of me resisted ordering because she was constantly questioning me as to when I was going to do it.....

 

[Italiahaircolor]

the cost of my album was included in the cost of my photographer...we did have to upgrade tho for the nicer cover, extra pictures, and our name embossed on the spine...over all, I think we went about $1,000 over.

 

[Elmorton]

Our photographer did some weird thing...we could either do a $250 credit for the album or do 200 proof photos (not re-touched etc), so we did the 200 photos and then bought our album outright, I think. The album cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $600, had I think 12 pages? Maybe 16? and 30-35 images total. We could buy a copy of it for a discounted $400, which I really wish my mom would have done, because she spent slightly less when she ordered prints. It's bound in Italian leather and has silk inside lining, the thick "story board" pages (yanno, like those really thick children's book pages?), and has silver leaf on the page edges. We also had our names put on the first page, and has a photo set into the cover. The thing was insanely expensive, but I looked at my parents' album so often when I was little that I felt like it was worth it to have something that's heirloom quality. I put the other 200 photos in a cheapie album from Target (which, btw, has an awesome selection of wedding albums - it was really hard to choose which I wanted).

I have a friend whose photographer did "magazine" pages, spiral bound and she said hers was about $100-150, and another friend did a similar thing, only hers is book bound with the magazine pages from Shutterfly and I think she said it was $60 or $80. So it really depends one what you're doing and what your photographer offers. When I was looking around at photographers, most seemed to offer the type of album I have, and it seems like the $400-800 is the norm. It starts to get reaaaaaally pricey with all the upgrade type stuff you can do. I thought I wanted pebbled leather and rice paper lining and an embossed cover/spine with our names and wedding date and a bigger album (ours was the smallest option) with more pages, but it was going to start getting insane, so the only "upgrade" we did in the end was having our photo inserted into the cover (which I'm glad we did - it looks very nice).

ETA: We ordered ours after a couple of months - not more than two or three, as it took a few weeks to receive. Our wedding was in mid-June, and I know we had it by mid-September.

 

[oobiecoo]

I ordered my album on my own through Shutterfly and got it in less than a week. I ordered it about 4 months after the wedding. Through professional photographers, I''ve seen the prices usually start around $800-$1000 for a simple album and go up from there.

 

[geckodani]

Um... 2 years later... still no album. Bad gecko, LOL.

 

[April20]

We are looking to do the one that is like a kiddo book, with the thick pages. I have no idea what it''s called. She will do lots of images in varying sizes and layer them, etc so that you don''t just have straight photos on each page. Does that make sense? It sounds cool and I''m willing to spend some money on it. My one saving grace is that the photograher is a friend and we get it at her cost, but I still had NO clue what to expect. Heck, she did my wedding for free. I have/had no clue how much anything costs!

 

[loriken214]

Date: 10/22/2008 4:29:48 PM
Author: April20
We are looking to do the one that is like a kiddo book, with the thick pages. I have no idea what it''s called. She will do lots of images in varying sizes and layer them, etc so that you don''t just have straight photos on each page. Does that make sense? It sounds cool and I''m willing to spend some money on it. My one saving grace is that the photograher is a friend and we get it at her cost, but I still had NO clue what to expect. Heck, she did my wedding for free. I have/had no clue how much anything costs!

April, we did the same thing with our album and spent $600 on it....that was over 10 years ago! It turned out great, but it sits in the box now. We do have various framed photos placed around the house, though.

The one thing I wanted was a nice album and we spared nothing to get it.

Lori

 

[MustangGal]

Our phtographer took the pictures, and gave us the negatives, then we just had whatever we wanted printed (this was 7 years ago before digital photography was the norm). To me it was more important to own our negatives than have a fancy album. DH''s grandmother gave us a pretty engraved album for my shower, so I just ordered pictured and filled that up. It''s not the most professional looking, but the silver cover looks nice on the coffee table.