Creating your own wedding album - suggestions?

ThatGeekGirl

As the title says really - we got our wedding pictures back a few months ago and are finally getting around to creating a wedding album. We have decided to do it ourselves (as in not have our photographer do it) so looking for advice from anyone who has done their own Where did you get it done, how long did it take, costs or anything to avoid etc... all advice really appreciated!!!

baby and crumble

Not a wedding album but we got our engagement photos book printed with Photobox.

I love messing around with layouts etc so I did all that myself and I'm really happy with how it turned out. It takes time to get it all right but it was fun. It was really reasonable (30 + shipping for a 36 page book) and because I can print more copies of it if I want, I don't have to be precious about it- you can give it to kids or messy people or look at it over coffee without worrying about sticky fingers and crumbs.

Pro tip if using Photobox- if you make up your book and have it ready to order, leave it in your basket for 24 hours without checking out and you'll usually get an emailed code for money off.

mcgiggles

My sister made one from photobox aswell! They also got canvases printed on there! Turned out great!

ThatGeekGirl

Ooh thanks I will check it out so. I love the idea of us choosing things ourselves as the pictures all turned out fab but we have our own faves that the photographer didn't choose for say the highlight reel etc. I just know if we left it up to him to create a book he might over look what we prefer. Great tip for the discount too haha :P

irishgirl19

Whats the going rate for photo box. Our photographer wants 500

oconnoao

We used a company online called Pikperfect.com and we were very happy with it. Having made some albums in the past on PhotoBox, I knew how time consuming they can be to make, and making them look professional isn't always easy!
This site was great - we uploaded all the photos that we wanted included/considered for inclusion, and they arranged about 300 of them into an album. We had a couple of back and forth mails with changes needed, and when we were happy, they made the album and sent it out promptly. We were delighted with it- it's well arranged in terms of colour and matching throughout, much better than I could have done myself.
I can't remember the exact cost, in total I think it was about 300 euro for an A3 album with close to 100 pages, along with 2 smaller ones for the parents. Not sure if the link will work: https://www.pikperfect.com/en/photobook/share/JB186619427/fullscreen/1#/page/1

spottybananas

I made ours on Photobox, it was about €120 with discount, and I added a lot of extra pages.

ThatGeekGirl

Did ours on photobox last night it was actually really easy once I got the hang of it. We wanted really simple black book with modern enough layout so it was very little in cost. Also did the over night in the checkout trick and got 30% discount came out at E65 so if I messed up or it turns out not to be good quality I am happy to write it off and go somewhere else.

pullandbang

irishgirl19 wrote: »

Whats the going rate for photo box. Our photographer wants 500

A photobook from Photbox and a proper storybook album from your photographer are two different things.

Photobox are brilliant for photo books and once you upload decent photos you'll get back a decent book. However, it's not going to be an album like one designed and provided by your photographer and €500 would be roughly the price for a good quality album. Having said that, I've just done a 30 page album 35 x 25cm in a leather case, along with two smaller replica (parent) albums in presentation boxes, for just over €500.

baby and crumble

Yeah to be fair the quality you’ll get from a photographer designed and printed book will be leagues ahead of something from photobox. My thing is though that I have friends who have those and tbh they never take it out of the box and tissue paper it came in, because they’re absolutely terrified of getting anything on it. One of them even came with special archival gloves to wear when turning the pages.

I’d rather sacrifice quality and some of the other elements to yes, save myself a few hundred euro on something I might only ever look at a handful of times. I plan to design and print a few books on photobox, get some canvases printed and maybe some mini books for the parents too. That said I’ve made lots of photo books before and while I’m not even half as good as a professional, I enjoy doing it and I’ve learned a few little layout tricks as I’ve gone along.

Mimojo

I also made ours on Photobox and absolutely love it. It does take time, but it is well worth it. I paid about 100 euro for it, Photobox constantly run discounts which is handy.

The quality is absolutely brilliant, go with the premium photobox and you cant go wrong. I also included a few photographs other people took that I really loved, and a few from the next day and night too, and added in lots of additional pages. You can remove the photobox logo at the back for a few extra euro too.

Bacchus

Photobox is decent quality but nowhere near premium. Unfortunately a lot of quality printers require you register with them as a business before they give you access to order albums from them. TBH, my last photo print order from Photobox was terrible quality. They're using cheaper photo paper and the prints have started to curl. That doesn't mean that the albums have declined in quality, but it's clear sign where their priorities are.... cost over quality.

One company I adore is artifact uprising. They are based in the US and are fantastic, premium quality at a reasonable price. The ONLY caveat is to watch the price of shipping. They used to have a EU base so shipping was grand but my last order last year had a crazy P&P cost. Their cust. service is fantastic though and they discounted my order to negate the P&P cost. They said they were working on their delivery costs to the EU but I've yet to order again (will be in the new year). If they've sorted that out, I 100% recommend them for something as important as your wedding album.

baby and crumble

Bacchus wrote: »

One company I adore is artifact uprising. They are based in the US and are fantastic, premium quality at a reasonable price. The ONLY caveat is to watch the price of shipping. They used to have a EU base so shipping was grand but my last order last year had a crazy P&P cost. Their cust. service is fantastic though and they discounted my order to negate the P&P cost. They said they were working on their delivery costs to the EU but I've yet to order again (will be in the new year). If they've sorted that out, I 100% recommend them for something as important as your wedding album.

You could have a look at that new US postal service from An Post, we've registered but haven't used it yet.