Wedding albums: everything you need to know

Your wedding day is a day you will want to cherish for the rest of your life and what better way to do so than to create a beautiful luxury photo album to document each precious moment of your day.

The process of doing so, although in many ways daunting, is a wonderful and fun way of reliving your special day. The purpose of your wedding album is both to showcase and preserve these happy memories for the rest of your life, and for generations to come, therefore it is important to think about how to make a wedding album. For this very purpose we have written this guide to make the process as smooth and effortless as possible – and more importantly to ensure that the album you produce is one that you will love forever.

How to choose photos for a wedding album

When preparing to make a photo album, organisation is key. First and foremost, we urge you to make sure that wherever you store your photos, that they are backed up somewhere else. It is always much better to be safe than sorry!

When making your album and putting together which photos to include, you are in complete control of how the story of your day is told. While there are sure to be many photos of you and your significant other looking gorgeous, selecting a variety of types of photos will help recreate the atmosphere of the day.

These will include each stage of the day, getting ready, the ceremony, guests, the reception, and whatever sort of send-off you may have had. To ensure that you cover all the desired bases you may wish to create a checklist of sorts that works all the different stages your day will have had. I personally recommend adding the following to your list: you and your wedding party, sweet family moments throughout the day, the first look during the ceremony (one not to be missed!), photos of the décor, and of course plenty of the sure-to-be terrible dancing.  

More often than not, it can take at least a couple of months after the wedding day for the professional photos to arrive. We suggest that you use this time to gather photos taken by family and friends who attended the wedding. This is a great way of compiling images from multiple perspectives of the day. You may wish to use these photos to create a more intimate album aside from the one which will hold the professional photos.

Choosing your wedding album: size and style

Beautiful, high-quality photos deserve an equally beautiful and high-quality photo album… just like every single one of our handbound luxury leather photos albums.

Similarly, you want to choose an album which style will stand the test of time – this is why for wedding photos our customers tend to opt for our timeless and traditional Original Large Landscape Card Photo Albums. Each of these photo albums has gold detailing on the corners and spine, as well as wonderfully thick, non-bending pages.

Alternatively, both our white linen and white leather photo album were quite literally made for weddings. These look particularly beautiful when engraved with the names of the happy couple and the date of the special day.

In terms of the size and orientation of the photo album, this is where you must think practically and refer to the photos you have selected to go into it.

How many are there? When choosing the album, you can check how many pages in a wedding album and how many of various photo sizes it fits on our website’s  album layout page.

In equal measure, depending on whether many of your photos are portrait or landscape is likely to affect how you fill and lay out your album. Therefore, we recommend that should you have more portrait photos than landscape, you opt for a portrait album, and vice versa.

Meanwhile, if there is no predominant orientation, the popular option is landscape. Another important element to consider when selecting your album is where it will be kept. Will it be stored on a shelf, in a cupboard, or left out for viewing as a coffee table book? Naturally, this will impact where it is left to ensure it not only fits where it sits, but looks good sitting there.  

How to arrange a wedding album

When it comes to how to lay out a photo album there a few generic ‘rules’ I like to follow regardless of the album’s purpose. Firstly, it is important to get down how you choose what order you will put them in – whether it be chronologically (the most popular and a personal favourite), or thematically/ by subject.

The reason why I choose to order the photos chronologically is because it helps you remember the day – the big moments and the little ones – just as it happened. However, should you prefer to order by subject, we suggest dividing them into people, food, flowers and décor. Choosing your favourite photos ahead of final arrangements will help you make sure they get pride of place.

Generally, how you space the photos on each page will depend on how many you need to fit in the album. Nonetheless, trying to get many photos on to your pages needn’t mean it looks a mess. To avoid this, try to main some uniformity throughout the book. For example, if you need to fill every page then fill them with similar spacing and orientations.

Or you may want to alternate pages with a busier, fuller page with a less busy page that focuses on one or two of your favourites. For favourite or more intimate photos, giving them their own pages with plenty of space around them is a great way of pulling the viewer in and giving the photo the attention that it deserves.

How to stick photos in wedding album

Once all the various selection and arranging processes are done, it’s time to stick them in. There are a few ways to insert your photos; corners, using spray mount, or something called Pritt Roller. All of which can be bought online. When making my own albums, I use Pritt Roller. It is essentially a thin line of double-sided tape you roll out onto the back of your photos – quick, and mess free. A lovely way to consider documenting the day is to write in your album (in your best handwriting and only if there is space) the names of people and places in the photos.

Making a photo album is a therapeutic and extremely worthwhile practice that has stood the test of time. Our wedding photo albums are both stylish and traditional, making it all-the-more satisfying to showcase your spectacular day to your loved ones for those who couldn’t make it and for generations to come…

Moreover, the wedding keepsakes needn’t stop here – we have many other wonderful items to commemorate your day available on our website from engagement announcement china dishes to gorgeous invitation trays. Don’t forget to check out our full collection of engagement gifts too.