There are two choices often spoke about: coffee table books or wedding photo albums. When it comes to preserving your wedding photos for your life and future generations, you should know the key differences between them. Which is the best choice?
Coffee Table Books
Sometimes called “photobooks”, “wedding books” or “coffee table books”. These are sometimes lay-flat, so that the both pages lay more or less flat next to each other. They are commonly also seen without pages that lay flat, so that you have a bulge in the seam (gutter), where your image content can be concealed. They’re often printed on inkjet (or similar) and made purely by machine – they’re what you’d find at any of your local books stores. The print quality can appear similar to that of a genuine photographic print, but will lack fine detail and smooth tonal transitions.
Their only benefit being that they’re usually less expensive to produce. However, as only the thin print is the page, they can crease or even tear quite easily.
Wedding Photo Albums
Sometimes called “wedding albums”, “real wedding albums” or similar. These are will have genuine photographic paper with archival qualities meaning they’ll last over 100 years. The paper is mounted to a backing, and the page is assembled using library binding. Both processes use higher quality materials and have several stages to them – so are much more time consuming but create an album that is very durable and will last for generations.
It should be Well Made and Meaningful. Not one or the other.
The content of the images inside your album should be meaningful and emotive, as should the album itself present them beautifully and preserve them for the future. I’m sure you’ve heard the same stories I have, and for me, there would be nothing worse than an incredible, hand crafted album with images you don’t genuinely love. Or, the images you really care about, that don’t stand the test of time because the product wasn’t well made.
What I’m saying is this: be aware and informed on your choices when choosing your wedding photographer so you get everything you want and deserve.
Want to know about how I make my albums? Find out here.
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This is one of my personal photo albums. I make them every 12-18 months chronologically featuring travels, family, friends, and just day-to-day musings which make up some great memories. Trying to condense such a large period of time can be quite a challenge! But it’s always worth it. Naturally, they’re handmade, using archival quality photographic paper, so they stand the test of time.
