Should You Invest in a Wedding Album for Timeless Memories?

We are all so used now to everything being in a digital format including photographs. We all tend to have our photos on our phones or laptops and less and less photos to physically touch and look at. Most wedding photographers in Northern Ireland like ourselves will provide their couples with an online wedding gallery as it’s the easiest and fastest way to provide couples with the images from the day. While some old school wedding photographers or those that don’t want to invest in an online image delivery system due to the cost, will provide their couples with images on a u.s.b memory stick or send couples their photographs using cheap online file storage like Dropbox.

Having your wedding photos in a digital format is great, as it makes it easy to share them with your family and friends. Everyone also wants to share their favourite images on social media as well.

Wedding photographers have moved along with the times to facilitate this, but we don’t believe that this should mean that a wedding album should be a thing of the past. These unique and special mementos of your day will be cherished forever. Wedding albums are an easy way to access your wedding photos quickly as well as they are all in the one place, compared to having them on a u.s.b pen for example which you need access to a computer to use.

Having wedding photographs on your phone is also great but it can sometimes mean having to scroll through different albums or apps to eventually find your wedding photos. You are also limited to the screen size of your phone, meaning that your hi-resolution images won’t have the same impact as they would do in a printed format or as part of a wedding album.

Should you buy a wedding album

We can’t recommend enough the significance of having a wedding album. Here is a list of some reasons why having a wedding album is still so important;

A wedding album is a physical keepsake

As we have already mentioned, digital images are a great way to store and share your wedding photos. However, with any technology comes potential reliability issues. Having a tangible album where your wedding photos are stored is one of the safest ways to keep and store the most important photographs from your special day. Having a physical wedding album means that it can easily be passed on from one generation to the next. A wedding album is a very sentimental souvenir that you can pull out and flick through whenever you want. There is something very special about being able to actually touch and hold your wedding photos, a feeling that digital photos just can’t provide in the same way.

People love history and especially knowing their family history, being able to look back on a wedding album that is decades old is a fabulous keepsake to pass down. Usually, weddings are one of the only times that the whole family is together. Putting these photos in a wedding album is so important for the generations after, who will be able to see who was part of the family and put faces to names. Also, when it comes to the point when your loved ones are no longer with you, this is when you will be so glad to have this physical remainder of them to look back on for years to come.

This album below belonged to Laurene’s mum and dad and is one of her most prized possessions, especially after Laurene lost her Dad last year and her grandparents some time ago. It contains some of the very few photographs she has of them. It was made in 1977 so it is 46 years old now and while wedding albums in terms of style, materials used and how they are manufactured have moved on considerably since then it still looks almost as good as new.

Old wedding album

Preserve the memories from your wedding day

Nothing preserves a memory more than a photograph does. As wedding photographers in Northern Ireland, we will follow you throughout your wedding day and capture the memories as they are being created. Everyone says it but nobody believes it until their own wedding day finally comes around, but your wedding day will seem like one of the quickest days of your life. In a blink of an eye the day you've spent months, even years planning is over and all you have to remember it by is the memories in your mind.

A wedding album allows you to look at these memories and never forget them. Being able to take your wedding album out on your wedding anniversary and relive the special day is one of the most precious things about having a wedding album. Our storybook wedding albums tell the story of your wedding day from start to finish, so you won’t forget a thing.

Wedding albums Belfast

You will have your wedding album forever

If stored properly a wedding album will be in your life forever. Having all your wedding photographs stored just in a digital format can be risky. There is the very real possibility of digital files becoming corrupt or the files no longer being supported with technological advancements.

For example, even going back just 10-15 years ago it was very common for couples to receive their wedding photographs on a DVD or C.D. Many people then found that, when they went to look at their photographs years later that the disc was no longer working and that they had lost all of their precious wedding photographs. Some have also found that they no longer own devices which can read the discs.

It is lovely to have digital photos to share online, however if all your wedding photos are digital you will always run the risk of losing them. Phones, tablets and laptops can become damaged, get viruses which corrupts data or they simply become outdated and are no longer usable. If you don’t have your files backed-up you can say goodbye to all wedding day memories stored away on your devices. For this reason, a storybook wedding album is recommended. A wedding album is the only way to guarantee that you will have your wedding photos forever and always, if you keep it in a safe place. Make that one special day in your life last a lifetime with a high quality storybook wedding album.

According to a recent survey there has been a large increase of couples choosing to opt for a digital only wedding photography option with no album with a whopping 75% of all couples not purchasing a wedding album and instead receiving there wedding photographs on a u.s.b memory stick or by digital download only. All of our couples receive their images via an online gallery as u.s.b memory sticks are very unreliable as a method of storing photographs and some couples prefer the download option as it is more convenient for them. You can find further details on how to best back up your wedding photographs here.

STORING YOUR WEDDING PHOTOS

One thing that really surprised us from the data provided on the survey is that only 25% of couples purchased a wedding album. That is completely different from our own data. Our most popular wedding package includes a storybook wedding album.

As a photographer we know that printed photographs especially an album have a lot more impact and hold much more emotional attachment than digital photographs viewed on a computer or another device. We personally think that a large reason that so many couples opted to not have an album is down to cost. Some photographers charge a large mark up on the cost price of albums which can make it more difficult for couples to include one within their budget. We are really pleased that we have been able to keep the cost of albums affordable for our clients. We think that if more photographers did this, a lot more couples would choose an album in their wedding photography package.

There is also another reason why this data shows that only 25% of couples received an album, this is because of budget wedding photographers. We regularly get contacted by couples who decided on the cheapest option available when choosing a wedding photographer or had a friend photograph their wedding for free, asking us if we can re-edit their photographs and provide them with an album. We always say no, it isn’t possible to make a bad photograph good by editing it in a different way. Photography is about using light and composition to produce an image and no amount of Photoshop can fix a bad photograph. We often find that these are couples, who at one point considered us to photograph their wedding but decided to go for a cheaper or free option instead. The reason we only provide albums to our own couples is because designing an album isn’t an easy task. Firstly, it takes time and consideration, we would rather spend that time working on albums for our own couples. Secondly, for us to design an album in the way that we normally would, we need to know the story of the day, it isn’t possible to do that if we were not there on the day. There is also the issue of copyright of the images provided. If we don’t own the copyright to the images, we can’t use them. A lot of the “wedding photographers” who offer extremely low prices don’t have a proper business in place and don’t offer albums at all or only offer cheap of the shelf albums that can be bought by anyone because they are unable to be accepted by the higher end album companies as they can’t be verified as a professional photographer. When we first started to use our current supplier, we had to go through a vetting process before we could place any orders with them.

Belfast wedding albums

Better image quality

If you decided to choose one of our storybook wedding albums, it ensures that your images are being viewed at the best quality possible. With digital images you are reliant on the device you are using to view your images being able to provide enough resolution to display your images at their best quality.

Wedding photographers use very expensive calibrated wide colour gamut monitors when editing your photographs. The vast majority of computer screens people use at home are not calibrated and this means that colours won’t always look the same as was originally intended. Your screen may not be capable of displaying all of the colours that are in your images. Calibration is also quite poor usually on mobiles and tablet screens as manufacturers tend to oversaturate colours to make the screens look brighter. If you have only ever viewed your photographs using an electronic device you may never see what they should look like at all.

When you have invested in the cost of a having professional wedding photographers with you on the day, the time used to find photographers that suits you and of course the time needed on your wedding day to produce the magic, it seems a shame not to be able to see the finished result in all its glory.

Storybook wedding albums

 Storybook albums can be personalised

Having your digital copies of your wedding photographs is simply just that. You can make them into a collage or a slideshow but that is pretty much where the creativity stops.

Wedding albums are personal and our storybook wedding albums offer a huge range of colour options. You can pick a colour that will compliment your wedding theme that you spent a lot of time planning and putting thought into. For example, choosing the colour of the bridesmaid’s dresses is a popular choice for the album cover. You can choose to have matt or glossy album pages. Personally, we have always though that matt pages are the best fit for our style of wedding photography but you can choose either option. You can choose the colour of the presentation box your album comes in as well as choosing a photograph to be printed inside the album box lid which always adds a bit of wow factor. They are pretty much fully customisable.

Your wedding album should reflect the magical day you both had and personalising it does just that. In years to come you may only remember the main parts of your wedding day, the photographs included in your album and personalising your album will always help bring back memories of the day.

wedding albums in Northern Ireland

Wedding albums aren’t as expensive as you might think!

Everyone knows that weddings are expensive and with the cost of living crisis impacting on everyone, it’s natural that couples may try to find ways of lowering costs for their wedding. With ourselves you can either choose a wedding photography package that includes a storybook wedding album or opt for a package without an album and still have the option to purchase one later on. We have always offered the option for couples to purchase an album after they have received their images as that allows them the option to purchase one after their wedding when they may have more disposable income.

Our storybook wedding album prices at the moment start at £350.00 for our standard size 30 x 20 album and includes 30 pages, a larger 40 x 30 version is also available at a starting price of £550.00. Designed by us and handmade in Italy to the highest possible standards.

In terms of the overall cost of your wedding one of our storybook albums isn’t that expensive at all. A storybook album should provide you with a lifetime of memories from your wedding day. Couples will often spend much more than the cost of an album on things like the wedding cake, the flowers and even gimmicky things like photobooths and crisp walls etc. The cake gets eaten on the day, the flowers are only good for the day but your photography and your storybook wedding album will be with you for the rest of your lives. The last large survey on the wedding industry stated that the average cost of a U.K wedding was £15,171 so in terms of cost a wedding album cost is a very small percentage of the overall cost.

Wedding Photography packages

Alternatives to a storybook wedding album

If you have booked us as your wedding photographer, we provide you with a personal usage image rights licence which means than you can go to any printers and purchase an album from them without any issues. If you prefer not to use a local printer there are thousands of companies online that will allow you to upload your photographs to their platform, design an album yourself and place an order for delivery. If cost is an issue for you for this might be a slightly cheaper option, like anything else though you often pay for what you get.

While one of the online print companies may be a slightly cheaper option, unfortunately there is no guarantee that the product they will provide will be of the same level of quality. The album supplier we use does not sell their products to the general public. It is often the case that the very best printed products can only be sourced through a professional photographer.

Prints and wall art

If you decide that an album isn’t required at all, their may well be some of your images that you would like turned into prints or wall art. You may even decide that you want prints and wall art in addition to your storybook album.

We provide all of our clients with an online gallery so that they can view and download their hi-resolution edited images. We always upgrade every client to the luxury gallery option which means that as well as being able to view and download their images all of our clients galleries include an online shop as well.

Online shop for prints

The online shop allows our couples to purchase everything from high end prints and wall art to calendars and greetings cards all from their gallery. As with our storybook albums the supplier we have chosen for this offers amazing quality products and they do not normally sell direct to the general public. It’s a really easy system to use as well. We have set up a demo gallery so that you can see how the shop works.

DEMO SHOP AND GALLERY
Tommy + Laurene