Wedding Albums – Choosing – Design – Style

There are various types of wedding albums on the market, giving couples a bewildering level of choice – which makes the decision to choose a wedding album, a complicated one.

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We always get asked by clients why some albums are more expensive than others and what makes them different?  The answer is not as straight forward as one would like it to be.  Most of this is attributed to things like the manufacturer’s process of putting the album together and the type of materials being used to make the wedding album.  To explain it simply, modern digital wedding albums are like kitchen cupboards.  The carcass in majority of the premium kitchens are very much the same and the thing that makes the price difference is the type of doors and finish you choose for your kitchen units.

The same also applies to wedding albums, where the base and the construct of premium albums is the same, however the thing that defines the price difference is the type of paper being used to finally print your photographs on, the type of cover, the type of box to display the album in, the number of pages and the size of the album.  All these factors will make and affect the price of the album.

Types of Photographic Paper To Choose For Your Wedding Albums

The cost of wedding albums is defined by the photographic paper the album is printed on.  Over the last few years there has been an explosion in the number, types and grades of photographic paper.  This as all been possible as a result of high quality Giclée printing, which is a precision inkjet printing process.

Most digital albums are printed on 200gsm thick pearl or satin papers with uv coatings to preserve the images for posterity.  In addition to these papers you also have a choice of specialist papers, such as metallic and fine art papers.

Metallic papers have a very high contrast quality finish, therefore images, which have vibrant colours, will show off very bold, loud and the texture of the paper is very shiny.  This type of paper is mostly ideal for asian weddings.  However I would recommend that it is used sparingly, we would suggest limiting this to a medium sized album with 10 spreads, where each spread is two pages.
Fine Art Paper based wedding albums are growing in popularity, they also come in various types of grades that give images printed on these papers a different level of feel and look.  In the main, these papers absorb lot more ink, resulting in, blacks in black and white photographs appearing very dark and deep.  Overall, the images printed on these papers tend to print with lots of atmosphere and depth.  Again due to the cost of these papers the types of albums suited for this paper medium are ideal for specialised shoots. For example, bridal lingerie boudoir, post wedding dress shoot, portraiture and fashion shoots.

Wedding Album Making the Choice – Traditional Matted or Digital

The most popular wedding album is the the digital album.  This is the one that most people purchase to show off their wedding photographs in.  The album can contain anything up to 200 images over thirty spreads without increasing the size of the album.  It is also important to emphasise that as we add more spreads to the album it gets heavier and bigger.  Therefore heavier the album, more cumbersome and difficult it becomes to manage.  Also a digital album gives us, the client and designers of the album, much greater freedom to decide the size of the images and their placement on each of the spreads.

Traditional Matted Albums are centred on the classic albums before the digital age.  The albums have photographs, which are framed in a card. The key thing to note here is that these albums are very heavy and they get heavier as the size increases.  We therefore suggest to limit this type of album to a 30cm x 30 cm containing fifteen spreads.  The main reason for this is that the pages in a traditional albums are much thicker, nearly three to five times thicker than digital albums.  This is because the album is constructed in three to four layers, with the photography being printed on a heavy grade paper and then sandwiched between two pieces of card.

Wedding Album Covers – Acrylic – Plexi Glass – Soft Fabric – Image Wrap – Leather

Like with paper types, there are number of different types of covers on offer from manufacturers, the cover also governs the final cost of the wedding album.

Acrylic and Plexiglass Covers – these are toughened glass covers, which are scratch resistant and provides protection to the album.  This cover normally encompasses an image of your choice.  The difference between acrylic and plexiglass is that plexiglass is much tougher and it is claimed to be “bullet proof”.

Soft fabric and Leather Covers – these are common choices for most albums and many manufacturers offer a good range on the type of leather, fabric grades and colours.

Image Wrap – covers are also becoming popular with this extending to spine printing.

The range of albums we offer are –

Matted Traditional Albums – this is a combined digital and a traditional album, giving a greater deal of flexibility in having some matted pages and others as digital pages. For matted album pricing please click here. The price quoted is for an A3 size album.

Digital Albums –  Boxed Sets – Landscaped and Portrait Style – we offer a range of digital albums, which offer greater flexibility in terms of design and being able to place large number of images on few spreads without increasing the size and weight of the album significantly. Digital wedding album pricing click here.

Album sizes – We offer a range of album sizes.  There is a different price for each of the albums.  The sizes in inches we offer are as follows –

[5 x 7] – [8 x 6] – [8 x 8] – [12 x 9] – [12 x 12] – [14 x 10] – [16 x 12]

For more information about pricing on these albums, sizes and any other information please do not hesitate to contact us.