I recently dropped a load of money on ordering sample albums, and I didn’t feel bad about it for 1 second. Why? Because it’s one of my favorite parts of my job and honestly feels like a necessary capstone on every wedding, engagement, and portrait session I photograph. For me, a wedding album is the natural conclusion in the process of documenting a wedding story from start to finish.

You’ve probably heard photographers say something to the effect of “photos aren’t meant to live on your phone!” and that’s totally true but I don’t think it goes far enough.

In college as an art student I always worked primarily in two dimensional art; painting, graphic design, and drawing, but then later in my college career I started drifting towards photography and developed an appreciation for photography in its tangible form. It really took off in my Junior year when I took a class exclusively on photo-book design and visual storytelling. Over the course of the semester we honed our skills in the areas of editing, curation, and album design, but we also dove deep into printing, paper choice, and the tangible side of photo-books and albums.

I fell in love with the feel of paper, the turn of the pages, and the texture of an album cover. For me, that three-dimensional experience of photography has not yet lost its magic and I don’t think it ever will.

Perhaps you don’t relate to that experience and instead will connect better with this story:

I remember a day in 7th grade when my best friend Abby and I walked out to my grandparent’s farm right down the road from my childhood home. We did this on a frequent basis but on that particular day Grandpa decided to pull their wedding album down from the top shelf of the coat closet of the front room. While we turned the yellowing pages we chuckled at Grandpa’s stories; how he called Mama’s dress her “marriage dress”, and the tales from their honeymoon. While I type this I can literally feel the crinkling of the pages between my fingers and hear the crack of the binding that was worn from 60+ years of holding memories.

I know what it’s like to pay for a wedding and then practically have a heart attack at the idea of spending hundreds of dollars on a wedding album, but hear me when I say, that book will outlast your memories of your wedding and will be around to give you grandkids and great-grandkids a window into that part of their own history.

If you haven’t purchased a wedding album yet I would HIGHLY encourage you to reach out to your wedding photographer. Most photographers are happy to design wedding albums, even years after your wedding. It’s also a great gift for an anniversary, and parents ALWAYS enjoy getting a wedding album to show off to their friends.

If you are a past SMP couple I would love to make you an album. I price my albums and prints to be accessible to all of my clients, so that every couple I serve can afford to have an heirloom keepsake.

Cheers!

Sarandon