tell me why...

I don't think you do need a professional album. Check out cjb88's DIY album - it's beautiful

Album

it never crossed our minds to not have a professionally made album.

our albums are classic and beautiful and are professionally done.

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Posted by BRod-Cheng

I don't think you do need a professional album. Check out cjb88's DIY album - it's beautiful

Album

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definitely!! but can someone who's not so familiar with photoshop do it? now that's the question

-- the stealth groom
(giving meat eating, sports watching, whiskey drinking men a voice on liweddings since 10/06)

Thanks We did buy 12 wedding albums from shutterfly.com for parents and family members but we also ordered a professional album. Our layouts should be ready in a few weeks.

I agree with CaMacho that shutterfly albums (photoworks, mypublisher.com etc) are nice and I make them all the time for trips and such. However, shutterfly albums do not compare to a professional album.

We have not received our final album (have not approved pages yet either) but based on the 10 x 15 digital albums Lina Jang has made in the past we know that it will be amazing.

The shutterfly albums we made are nice but they are fragile as are the imagestation.com, photoworks.com and mypublisher.com albums. I have made an album using each of those sites.

The 10 x 15 digital professional album with a photo cover was a huge selling point with DH when we selected our photographer. Sample albums are here We are thinking of something like the Shari & Ted album with the photo covering the open album Lina has a 30' (or larger) monitor in her office so it will be a treat to go there to see the layouts

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Posted by CaMacho

Everyone is going to have a different opinion on this. Here's mine...

Shutterfly & Mac albums are nice (we did them for our parents and we did one for our e-pics), but they do not compare to our photographer's album!!

We just picked up our album on saturday and it is AMAZING! We did the magazine style so each page is a collage of pictures with faded pics in the background, etc. The pages are so thick like cardboard coated in plastic and platinum edges. The book is leather with our picture on the front and our names/date embroidered in. Basically it can't get ruined. The pages from shutterfly are very flimsy... a little thicker than magazine pages, but very thin. They can tear easily.

IMO... get an album from your photographer! It's so worth it. If anything, take out parent albums and make those on shutterfly.

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I could not agree with CaMacho more!!!
I have made several DIY albums from both Kodak Gallery and Snapfish (from non-profesh pics I myself took at friend's weddings - made this for them as part of their gift) and while they are very pretty and nice to flip thru - they just do not even slightly compare to the professional album you will get from a profesh photographer.
The biggest difference being the paper quality. The DIY albums have such thin paper - can easily rip or get bent or damaged somehow.

But it all depends on the couple - some people are just not that into photos. I and my DH are. I grew up in a 'photo family' - my mom always had her camera everywhere we went. We have photographs to look back on and enjoy from so many different occasions in our lives. Pictures are important to me - especially from one of the most special days of my life. I want a beautiful and professional album to remember my wedding day by.

But if it is not that important to you - then don't get it. Everyone has a diff. opinion on things...different strokes for different folks!

Now I have to ask all of you a question.......am I the only one on LIW whose photographer gives proofs on a PROTECTED CD? Meaning I cannot do a darn thing with my proofs on my own. I couldn't make my own album with my profesh pics even if I wanted to. Unless you all know a way to unprotect this CD so I can copy and save them as files??? Please share with me if there is some way I can do this. Not so I can make my own album - just b/c there are some shots I would love to make copies of and give to people...but at $24.95 for a 4x6 from my photographer...there is just no way I can do this. Too expensive!!!

And Jess (CaMacho) - I commend you for picking your proofs so quickly and having your album complete already!!! There are so many brides who get lazy and still don't have their album 3 years after their wedding!!! Our photographer gives an incentive to not fall into this lazy category....if we pick proofs for all 3 albums (ours and 2 parent albums) by 6 weeks from our wedding date....Jan. 6th for us....we get 20% off all extras we pick...Meaning if we go over the 80 photos for our album that we chose for our package..and extras in the parent albums...any extra pics we want printed...20% off. Which is a huge savings b/c I already know we are def. going over and getting lots of extras! So we are def. going to hand in our list of pics on time!!!

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Posted by KandE917

And Jess (CaMacho) - I commend you for picking your proofs so quickly and having your album complete already!!!

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Thanks! We wanted it ready for xmas so we could show all our family.

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Posted by KandE917

Now I have to ask all of you a question.......am I the only one on LIW whose photographer gives proofs on a PROTECTED CD? Meaning I cannot do a darn thing with my proofs on my own. I couldn't make my own album with my profesh pics even if I wanted to. Unless you all know a way to unprotect this CD so I can copy and save them as files??? Please share with me if there is some way I can do this. Not so I can make my own album - just b/c there are some shots I would love to make copies of and give to people...but at $24.95 for a 4x6 from my photographer...there is just no way I can do this. Too expensive!!!

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Yeah. This is some of why I'm over this whole part of the wedding process. I've been asking photographers, as part of our custom package, how much it is to own all your images so you can do what you wish with them. You can't open the pics up in paint and resave them? Or open a 'copy' of them? Yeesh.

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Posted by stealthgroom

... I should have a photographer made album?

Seriously. We're having a kosher wedding; our hall requires us to use one of three florists; we want to have our friends and family around us. And through all of this, of course, we still have a budget. So we have limited places to really cut costs in the big pieces.

I've seen three amazing posts on diy photo albums in the last 12 hours:

akaMrsT

ChrissynRicky

N.Y. bride

For the ladies and gents out there who have done professional albums, do you have any giant glaring reasons why we should do one. I mean, I'm still pretty new to this whole wedding planning thing, and I could just be missing the point. Is the quality that much better?

tia!

--the stealth groom
(giving meat eating, sports watching, whiskey drinking men a voice on liweddings since 10/06)

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Thank you for noticing. Im glad you liked it. Im so glad I did it this way - like someone else said - after the wedding most will be busy with thank yous and getting on with other things and will lose interest in picking out photos etc - trips to the photographer. I took my CD from 12th night and slid the pics into a layout on shutterfly and BAM I was done for less than $100.