Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Our Wedding Album
I found our wedding photographer on Flickr. (Notley Hawkins) I'm of the opinion that no matter what, you should have an excellent photographer for your wedding. Those truly are the images you will be remembering the day through for the rest of your life. Sure, I have little snapshots in my head, but for the most part, I was concentrating on the task at hand.
Having said that, I did not have room in the budget for a $2000 photographer, and quite frankly, I didn't even think that the $2k photographers were worth it--I was looking at much more expensive people.
So I made a deal with Notley that at the end of the day, I would pay him a flat (well deserved) fee, and he would simply give me the raw dvds. All 3500 photos without editing by him. I work in photoshop all day long, and am perfectly capable of doing that stuff.
I knew all along that I would make a Blurb book for the album. Blurb is SO AWESOME!!! I've evangelized about it to so many people, I can count at least a dozen books that I have talked people into making after showing them some of the books I've made. They have great usable templates for photos, photos and text, or just text.
I, however, do layout design for a living and couldn't be so simple as to use pre-made templates. So I designed a whole photoshop layout and design look, and plugged in each of the hundreds of photos myself, saved them out as full-page jpgs, and plopped them into the book. Here are a couple of the pages (you can click to make bigger)
This 80 page, 13 inch by 11 inch coffee table book cost $80. Are you freaking kidding me? That is the best value for a wedding album I've ever heard of!!
I SOOOO loved designing this book. I would love to be a book designer for a living. I have so many plans for other Blurb books--a family quilt encyclopedia, a family cookbook, a portfolio book for me, and the next one will probably be the honeymoon album. It's so affordable that I couldn't have had 4x6 prints made of all those photos for that price! I'm never messing with printed individual photos again. You can make a 7x7 70 page book with about 300 photos for less than $30. You just can't beat it. And the quality is amazing!
Here's the cover my Mom, a.k.a the Craft Fairy made for me. She took fusible heavy duty (1/8 inch thick) interfacing, ironed it to the wrong side of this fabric, and bound it. Reall, it's just 2 seams up the side, then machine stitched with bias tape binding. It's perfect!
Labels: weddingness
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I did make a Blurb book of Miles' first year. I gave a copy to the Grandmothers for Christmas and they loved it. I think I only did 40 pages, paperback and it was $13! So worth it.
Momma Mueller
Next time I see you, bring the book. I wish so much that I could have been there.
I just came across Notley Hawkins photos on Flickr the other day, recommended to me because of his Callaway County photos. Wow, Wow, Wow to your book. :)
Love the book - can't wait to see it in person someday! You could easily do this for people and charge a pretty penny for it. You are so talented! Anyway, I'm going to have to check Blurb out...I've been meaning to put some pics in an album and this looks WAY better than Snapfish.
GORGEOUS photos of a beautiful day! I agree, good photos of your wedding day are a precious window of memories. Thanks for sharing a peek into your album....and great cover, Craft Fairy!
What a FABULOUS album...more than FABULOUS actually and I agree with the other blogger that you are extremely talented...the cover was a must and very, very lovely..
WOW! What an awesome post! What a talent you are! And what a great trove of information - thank you!
Having gone with an amateur "photographer" for my wedding 26 years ago..... I agree wholeheartedly with making SURE to have an excellent wedding photographer!
We cherish our photos of course, but most of them are horrible.... and he lost the negatives as well. Our pics will need to be restored at some point - luckily we have a lots of choices now.
Thanks again for such a great post - I'm already on my way to Blurb!
Meg :)
wild child
www.megibug.blogspot.com
Also, how much would you charge to make my photo book? Just think about it.
your album looks fantastic! Thanks for the tip about Blurb. I've made wedding albums for all my family except myself. Now its my turn.