The DIY Wedding Album to Save Some $$$$ **Vendors Welcome**

I found a photographer that doesn't print pictures - he just gives the all the photo rights & pictures on CDs. His prices are lower then other photographers I've come across & he has award winning photography (win!)

I don't think I'll be printing out ever single photo - probably a few for frames around the house & I can make my own little photobook for free. (my grandmother spends 90% of the year traveling the world - she makes a photobook of the trip and always gets freebee photoalbums). So this option works really well for us.

* Just wanted to add: a professional may be able to shed some better light on this... but I have found a few photographers that do leather bound photobooks & a bunch of 'free' prints in some of the packages. If you have your heart set on a particular album you may find it better to have a photographer do that for you.

I think it all depends on what you want. Our package comes with the CD with high res pictures and copyright release plus 100 prints in a keepsake box. Any albums are extra. I highly doubt that we will be getting an album. We prefer our pictures to be in plain sight. So the majority of ours will be in frames around the house. And if we do decide on an album it will probably be a DIY online.

Not sure I get why you wouldn't want two photogs at the reception and only one when you are getting ready. Seems like there would be more opportunity for a variety of pics and the reception. When you are getting ready, it's just you.

But yeah, if they give you a CD with publishing rights, order your own books/prints. I even got a $20 shutterfly gift card when I registered at Target so I will be getting some for free!

Many photographers these days include discs with printing rights in their offerings. Yes, you will save money creating your own scrapbooks, albums and printing at Walgreens, but the difference in quality will be very noticeable, especially a few years down the road. Printers like Walgreens do not use the same quality of paper, inks, UV coatings, etc. that keep professional prints looking great for years and years (think of how your parents' wedding photos have orangey and blue casts, all faded, etc.). The album vendors do custom work and the results show in the binding, cover, paper, mounting, etc. You'd be shocked to know what we pay for albums as photographers...it's a lot more than you might imagine. You also have to factor in the time we put on editing and retouching your images and designing the layout. So...yes...you will save money doing it yourself, but will you be happy with what you get? If so...great. If not...think about having it professionally done.

One other thing: discs have a very limited shelf life, and technology changes constantly. Be sure to back up your images on a hard drive, cloud, or something so that you still have them when the disc fails or computers use other kinds of data storage.

@Pumpkin - I want 2 photographers for the get ready photos. Basically I want 2 photographers for everything until the reception. Then once the reception starts, I think I only need 1 photographer. Some packages that I have seen you pay for the 2nd photog per hour, but some of the prices are already included in the quote. So it will just depend on what is affordable.

@Lisa - Thank you for the input. This is what I was looking for. I imagine there have to be places online that print high quality wedding albums though. I just don't know of any and was hoping that somebody in the WW community would have some suggestions.

I would be careful too...My photographer charges $200 for a high res/low res cd with rights, so it would be cheaper for me to do prints/albums with her. The CD is more then the sitting sessions for our engagement pics, but our photographer prints her own images/canvas prints and designs the albums. I would ask for an itemized deduction of what everything is costing, because it may be cheaper to go through them then on your own. If I were to go elsewhere it would be the $200 for the cd and then the extra $100-150 for the album. Where if I just go through her its $250 for a custom made high quality album.

That being said...we are getting the CDs also, but I just wanted to caution you to check into what you are paying for. Those CDs/Rights are their lively hood and they may charge a ton for them so they are not loosing as much for you to go get the "cheaper" prints vs. doing it with them. (especially if they do their own prints)

If you want to make your own wedding album, here is a great review a guy did of like 10 different photobook websites.

http://www.digitalhomethoughts.com/news/show/97676/

After reading through this, I ended up choosing mypublisher.com and I paid extra for lay flat pages and super glossy printing and both extras were COMPLETELY worth the cost. I have done a variety of other photobooks for various occasions using both mypublisher and shutterfly. It was only with these 2 extras that I felt my latest wedding photobook compared with a photographers book (my package also came with a wedding album, but we did our own too that had more pictures cause we wanted to make a book we could give to our parents.

my previous books I've done were very nice photobooks and certainly "good enough", but no where near the level quality you would get through a photographer. my latest mypublisher book with the layflat pages and super glossy printing comes close to the photographers and I think would be a very

Good replacement. Also, its a matter of pricing photographers out. my final 2 photographer choices were only $350 apart in pricing with very similar quality levels-the pricier one included a 10 page spread 10x10 album and a $300 print credit. those too things DEFINITELY seemed worth the additional $350.

oh, btw, I ended up getting 50% off, but without a discount the mypublisher photobook with the extras and 45 pages would have been about $185.

We took the package with the album, canvas and a few prints because it wasn't much more expensive. I compared it with doing it myself online and the photographer's package was about $200 more expensive. It was worth me not wrecking my brain over yet another wedding related thing. And yes, I believe the quality is going to be better. But again, that was the difference in price we were ready to pay.

We actually offer custom designed and professionally printed wedding albums (coffee table books and flush mount albums) for a fraction of the cost most photographers will charge. We go through a popular-with-photographers printing company, but since all we do is album design, we're able to build-in a lower design fee. If you're looking for a quality album at a lower cost, and you will own the rights to your photos, something like that might be the way to go! That being said, most photographers provide gorgeous, quality albums... It all depends on your budget, design style, and what you're looking for! Hope that helped...

As the last poster mentioned, using a graphic designer is a good alternative to either creating your own album on a Shutterfly-type site or buying your photographer’s expensive album package.

With a graphic designer, you can have a professionally designed layouts and a premium-grade photobook from the same sources professional photographers use – at a cost that is significantly less than photographer’s packages. And the quality of premium-grade photobooks is far better than the photobooks available through sites like Shutterfly, for only a few dollars more. The construction is better, the pages are much thicker and they lay flat, and the images are more vivid. Graphic designers can also order flush mount albums for you as well, without the markup.

I would be happy to help answer any questions about how graphic designers work and the choice and variety of albums available. Susan Gallagher

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