How cool are these next little albums?  They are purse-sized and come in sets of four.  Perfect for giving to grandparents, parents, and close friends!

Remember Krista & Paul?  They live near London, England, were married in Banff, Alberta, Canada, and have impeccable taste and style.

Meet their wedding album.

This lovely hard covered coffee table book features magazine-style pages, traditional binding, a gorgeous black silk slipcover with their names embossed on the front, and a lovely photo on the book’s cover.  It seems fitting that this luxurious album was crafted in Canada, the country of their wedding.

Each page features one lovely, large image.  This book comes standard with 100 pages!

Bonus: Krista & Paul ordered several small books for parents and siblings.  Aren’t they adorable?  Perfect size for putting in a purse.

Don’t forget to check out my other album styles: the Flush-mount Storybook and the Fine Art Matted albums.  Have a great week, everyone!

So.  You’ve got these engagement photos.  You love them… but aren’t sure what to do with them.  They are too great to leave sitting in a drawer, but they can often get overshadowed by your wedding photos.  Why not put them into a gorgeous album or make a photo guest book for your wedding?

First, let me remind you about my storybook albums by Leather Craftsmen.  You can read about them HERE or HERE.  This is a pretty epic way to preserve your wedding photos.  Why not take your beloved engagement photos and make a companion album showcasing these photos?  The first album in this post is for my Amy and Nathan.  Their wedding package included a gorgeous wedding album, so they chose to get a smaller version of their wedding album that shows off their engagement photos. This particular album is an 8×8 album with luxurious black leather.

The next option is an engagement guest book.  This idea is great for two reasons:

#1: Standard store-bought guest books are often impersonal and rarely get looked at after your wedding.  Half the time, you can’t even read the signatures!  This is a highly personalized wedding keepsake.  It features your engagement photos AND there is room for your guests to write you messages.  Usually I try to grab a photo of all the guest books at my weddings, and it’s fun to see all the messages from guests.

#2: As your family grows, it’s likely that framed photos will be swapped out for pictures of your future kids.  This book is likely to be given prime real estate on a bookshelf or coffee table.  :)  It won’t be removed from a frame and banished to a life of shame.

A couple details about these books.  They have hard covers and flexible pages that lay flat when open.  I love this feature, as shown above.  You don’t lose any space on the page due to the binding causing a big curve in the page.  This lay-flat feature sets these coffee table books a league apart from typical consumer-level books.  As you can see below, the pages are lightly textured.  They have a very matte finish that accepts ink incredibly well; glossy pages aren’t always ink-friendly.  I’d almost consider the texture on these pages to give them a fibrous feel.

There is a large selection of cover options.  Shown here is a smooth black bookbinding fabric and a textured sage fabric (below).

Typically, one image will be featured on the left page with a semi-translucent image also placed on the right for guests to sign over the top.  Every once in a while, I like to add a full spread, panoramic image for “wow” factor.  Don’t you love this?

And lastly, here are a couple images that I grabbed at Pam and Matt’s wedding after guests had started signing.  It’s hard to tell but they chose an awesome platinum fabric for their cover – it’s my favorite color for covers!

So how are you using your engagement photos?  I’d love to hear your plans!

“In that book which is my memory, 
On the first page of the chapter that is the day when I first met you, 
Appear the words, ‘Here begins a new life’.” 
― Dante Alighieri, Vita Nuova

You know what it’s all about?

Life.  Love.  Family.

Photographs preserve memories.  What we looked like.  Our personalities. The day we pledge our love to “The One” we’ll share our life with.  And if we’re really lucky, the photographs will tell our story long after we’re gone.  They’ll tell our children and grandchildren that we were here; we were in love.  They’ll tell our children the story of how they came to exist.  Our photographs become our legacy.

Raise your hand if you are guilty of holding your photos hostage digitally.  If you have wedding photos that are sitting on a disk or in an online gallery through me (or another photographer), PLEASE print them out.  Please commission an album to showcase these gorgeous images that tell your story.  At the rate technology is changing, our DVDs and CDs of images are just a step away from extinction.  Putting them on a computer means they are a hard drive failure away from being lost.  Imagine if our parents and grandparents had taken their film negatives and slides… then kept them in a box?   If they had done that, many of my clients would never have been able to share those precious photos on a special photo table at their wedding.

I realize that everyone wants a disk of images on their wedding day.  And you know what?  I get it.  When I got married, that was really important to me too.  But I want ALL of my wedding clients to have an heirloom album, not just a disk.  I want them to have a custom work of art, their very FIRST family heirloom: a fine art album that will be cherished for the rest of their lives.  As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, I have chosen to album vendors that I consider to be among the very best.  The album in this post is the storybook album by Leather Craftsmen.  You can read more about them HERE.  The other album I offer is a fine art matted album by Cypress Albums.  You can read about my Cypress albums HERE.  Cypress and Leather Craftsmen are so very different but both are incredibly stunning.

It’s one thing to look at these pretty images on my blog, but I encourage you set up a meeting with me to actually hold this marvelous work of art in your hands.  This sample album was made from Micaela and Dustin’s wedding at the Monona Terrace in Madison, WI.  It features a platinum Japanese bookbinding fabric that feels like silk.  The embossing on the front is silver.  Rather than stamping their names, I chose part of a quote that speaks to my heart.  I firmly believe that the day you get married is the start of a new life, and the quote (above) by Dante Alighieri sums it up perfectly.

Over the last few years, I’ve been searching for albums that I can offer my clients.  And, after looking at dozens of companies and ordering samples from quite a few, I’ve finally decided to add a new album to my product line-up: Leather Craftsmen.

A while back, I showcased my Cypress Albums here on the blog.  They are a high quality, modern matted album featuring luxurious bookbinding fabrics, ribbon binding, and deckled edge pages.  I love them.  Seriously.  Love them.  The Cypress is more of a show-stopper album.  It’s impactful and shows only the best of the best; the most emotional images.

But I know that some clients want something different.
Enter: Leather Craftsman’s storybook album.  This album is every bit as high quality as the other, but features a wider selection of cover choices.  Not only can you choose top quality leather, you can also choose luxurious book-binding fabrics.  They are able to hold more images and become more of a story-telling type of album.

With pages that are mounted from edge to edge, and an insanely small gutter between the pages, your images are displayed prominently for all to see.  The pages are thick and substantial and lay completely flat!  You really have to hold and touch these albums to feel how impactful they can be.  This album, along with The Cypress, is a fine art album that your grandchildren will be proud to own.  I’m a big fan of heirloom, quality products; I believe in purchasing quality items that will last for generations.  This album is one of those.

Disks of images are great, but when it you look at technology, think about how obsolete disks will be in the next few years.  An album like this will not need upgrading, suffer data loss, corrupted drives, or any of the other common ailments of our digital age.  It seems funny to think of photos as an investment, but how many of us have gone to a wedding where the wedding photos of grandparents and great-grandparents are displayed?  Those images are priceless.

Please contact me to inquire about purchasing your Leather Craftsman storybook or Cypress matted albums.

Cypress Albums, which you can find HERE, seemed to call my name. Even after I passed by their booth (at the largest tradeshow I’ve ever attended), I felt as though I had to return just to touch and see these incredible albums again. In fact, I returned to this booth three times! Given the fact that there were hundreds of booths at this show, I think it’s a safe assumption that I was completely mesmerized with this company and their beautiful albums.

What is so special about them, you might ask? For starters, they are created BY HAND here in the USA. They use the highest quality Japanese book-binding fabrics and luxurious satin ribbons. They are elegant. Well made. Luxurious.

To be honest, I was surprised that I liked them so much. The trend for wedding photography seems to be using a more modern style of album; a digital flush-mounted album that shows off lots of photos with a gazillion different styles of covers. With Cypress Albums, I loved their trademark album, “The Cypress Album”. These albums are more timeless than trendy. They are a modern version of the classic matted album.

What I loved about them was my impression as I looked at an album. Rather than flipping through the pages, eager to get to the next “spread” of photos, I stopped to savor each page. Because each page featured only 1-2 images, I slowed down. Poured over each individual image. I really experienced each photo, both by itself AND as part of the whole story. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, and in the case of these elegant albums, I definitely believe it. This is the first time that I wondered if my decision to offer only flush-mounted albums was the right decision.

So. Fast forward to over two years later. Finally, I gave in to the little voice in my head that has been calling me back to these albums. I ordered my photographic prints, then my sample album. It was worth waiting for. This truly was the “Fine Art Album” that I have been hoping for. Don’t get me wrong, I still love flush-mounted albums. They are lovely and amazing. But for my clients that want to slow down and savor their album just a little bit more, my heart is happy knowing that they can choose my newest album offering.

More photos:

The elegant presentation box that each album arrives in

I chose to have this presentation box customized with the bride and groom’s names. Simple yet elegant.

It even comes with an elegant ribbon for pulling out your album easily!

The pages are thick and feature a deckled edge.

Pages feature each image, professionally mounted by hand, inside the matting.

I chose to have this album with a traditional ribbon binding, but clients can also choose to have a “library” bound book. Library bound is more typical of a regular hardcover bound book. Side view:

So far, I’ve shared this sample album with a few friends. I wish I could have recorded their reactions on video! I heard a lot of “ooh” and “wow” and “this is amazing”! One friend said she felt like she was opening the most amazing gift as she opened the box. I love that! Wedding clients: please contact me for more information on these incredible artisan albums.