While waiting for our digital photos, I've been starting out in our quest to DO SOMETHING with these hundreds of wedding prints. The first step was deciding to put the proof images in something other than a shoebox. (If you haven't booked your photographer yet, proof sets are just prints of every photo from the wedding.) Our photographers offered the proofs in two formats: a pre-printed book and the loose 4x6 prints. Personally, I prefer the prints, because I love that we can take them out and frame them if we want. Later, I overheard one of them talking, and she said that customers who order loose prints often complain because they are unwieldy, and because family members and friends will come over and steal one or two of them.
Well, we had no such problems, mostly because we never told anyone that we had any prints, and because our house is too messy to invite anyone over to. Also, the photographers made it very easy for our geographically spread-out family to buy their own prints online, so that worked out well. And in the beginning at least, I love that we have them to pick up and look at when it's time to do things like choose album shots, select photos for enlargements, or whatever else (like writing Weddingbee recaps!).
But eventually, I needed to put the prints in a format that made it easier to look them over. I had put them in a cute photobox, but after we'd selected images for the album, I figured we needed a book for long-term storage.
Aaron Brothers was having a sale, and I met another recent bride there as I was checking out. For 50% off their regular price, I purchased their "5-up" Trevor album, a refillable album which holds 500 photos. It comes with 50 sheets, which hold 10 images each (5 per side). I bought 4 extensions, which brought the album's capacity to 900.
The cover has a 4x6 insert, so I just picked a photo and stuck it in there. It immediately looked great -- this was already way too easy.
The album's black pages are a nice backdrop for the images, and definitely a good fit for our photographers' style. Almost immediately, I was struck by how dramatic the photos look on the pages, even behind plastic. I also loved how the 5-to-a page album displays both horizontal and vertical photos. It worked very well for keeping photos of one theme on a page:
This is a post album, which means that when you're ready to add pages, you just lift the flap in the back and unscrew it. The packets of extra pages come with their own extension posts. There is a little cardboard/vinyl binding to cover the edges, but it is very cheap and came off before I got the album home. As it turns out, it doesn't matter -- it has no role in the structure of the book, and since I nearly doubled the book's original size, it wouldn't have fit anyway. Here's the spine of the book, looking a little full:
It took me a couple of hours to fill the album, which was a nice project for a chilly Saturday afternoon (especially when accompanied with some hot tea and an episode or two of Murder, She Wrote... I love that old show!). I left a few blank spaces here and there so that I could keep a nice flow to the album, and group photos together by theme and by category (Getting Ready, First Look, etc.).
After an extra 30 pages, the album is full to the brim with over 800 photos:
Mr. Oyster liked that I had done this. He's not very computer literate (by his own admission), and upon seeing this album, confessed that he felt looking at the proofs online was "too much work." Well, I certainly have no problem looking at images online, but I've recently gotten back into the idea of having physical photo albums after storing all my photos digitally for the past ten years or so.
The next album I am likely to work on is what I call our "engagement album," where I plan to put the engagement and rehearsal dinner photos. The next album to arrive, however, was our "official" wedding album, and I'll write about that one next.
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