To Make your own Photo Album? or order from Photographer?

I'm making one on Mixbook.com with our E-pix (I like the variety and options better than on Shutterfly) to be used as our guest book, but we still plan on ordering one from our photographer. Personally, I think the quality and the way the books is just a lot nicer than those on the DIY sites...

We're going to make our own through Blacks Photography or Costco or something. I used to do year books in highschool and just be prepared if you DIY, it takes quite a lot of time to choose photos, layouts, etc -- but then you get EXACTLY what you want. We're making albums for the parents for sure.

PS. I ordered the free Shutterfly book and it's pretty good quality. I will consider using their leather-bound if it ends up being cheaper than going to a physical store near me.

Thanks! I'm going to check out mixbook.

@LadyMonk yay! wedding date twin Do you think the glossy pages are worth the extra add-on?

Our photographer starts albums at $440 so I don't think I'll be ordering any.

Yikes! that's a lot of dough.

Apparently the paper the photographers use is a lot better than what you would get from the diy kind of sites. The professional photographers use paper, ink etc for photos that will last forever and will not fade etc, unlike the other places where quality is so so and eventually they will fade. Just had this conversation saturday with our photographer on ordering our epics once we see them. I think it is justifiable for prints that will be setting out or framed, that could fade from sunlight, not sure how much it matters for photo books.

We have a $250 print credit through our photographer, which we will be using.

I am going to make my own!

Our photographer doesn't offer one so I will have to make my own which I am not looking forward to. Hopefully, I can find someone to do it for me.

We'll order probably 50 prints from our photographer, plus one of those fancy "coffee table"-style photo books with 20 images in it. The rest I'll save digitally. I like the idea of one day having a prints of all of them, but there's an obscene amount of photos soooo we'll see how that goes, lol.

We will probably order our own albums (for ourselves and family, since my mom is basically devastated she isn't getting an album of pictures...) from MyPublisher or Shutterfly. Our photographer chargers upwards of $700 for an album, so that is NOT happening.

The photo package we picked comes with one album, but we're making them on our own for our parents. You could order them through her for like $350 a piece. If it wasn't included, I'd order my own.

If I can suggest - I have used Picaboo.com and have never had a bad experience! The quality is phenominal. I did my daughter's engagement book from there and it came out beautiful. I've used them for baby books, and many other items and they are of high quality. Their program is very easy to use and I think their quality is way better than some of the others listed. Just MHO - but, you won't go wrong with them (and no, I don't work for them ! LOL)

I'm not sure about glossy pages versus not. If you're talking about images fading though, the paper and ink has to be acid-free, so maybe that is something to check into before ordering.

Albums weren't part of our package either, but I'm still would DIY it... I'm just a DIY-er, though.

I've made many photo books myself online, but for our wedding album, we had our photographer do it. It was honestly the best $200 I've ever spent. She did an amazing job and we had it in only 3 weeks. I'd still be sitting here choosing which photos to use if I were doing it myself.

We are ordering through our photographer. $700 and we paid for it up front. We also bought parent copies for each of our parents. I can't wait until we get our pictures back so I can choose the photos for our album.

http://www.onsitemn.com/details/album-options/

I love Mypublisher. I have two e-pic albums from them.

I made my own album from Shutterfly and I couldn't be happier with it. I waited until they had one of their 40% off sales and upgraded to a leather lay-flat album. I believe the album comes with 20 pages to start but you can add pages for a certain amount per page. Mine ended up with 44 pages and I had a blast creating it.

I did mine on Shutterfly. $250 for 72 pages on a flat layout high quality paper. My photographer wanted $100 for 20 pages. I love how mine turned out.