Picture Perfect

In early September, we'll be taking our engagement portraits. Sure, we'll only have two months until The Backyard Wedding at that point, but better late than never, right? I posted a few months ago about different locations around town we had been considering, and we've finally decided on the historic Paramount Theatre, since it's one of our favorite places in Austin and where we went on a few of our very early dates. So we're hoping to time the shoot for when the marquee bears the name of The Backyard Groom's all-time favorite movie, "Lawrence of Arabia," which we see there every year.

Our photographer is a friendor who has never shot a wedding before (although he's worked as a professional portrait photographer for years), so I can't wait to see how the photos turn out. Since the engagement session is so late, we won't be including photos in our awesome invites (which I'll be blogging about soon!), but we might like to include a few in our wedding album. We've always been planning to make our wedding album ourselves using one of the many options available online.

For example, The Backyard Groom and I try to take one big vacation every year, and after each one, he makes me a photo book of the best pictures from the trip. (Since he's a professional photographer, there is no shortage of great pictures!) In the past he's used, Apple's iPhoto and Shutterfly to make albums, and they've all turned out great.

For any readers out there who have never ordered photo books online, they are usually around 20 pages in length and combine photos and text. For basic books, you can add additional pages for a price, and you can also customize the cover to be a hardcover with a photo, leather or suede or a soft cover. You can choose from a template or design the book yourself using their client software. The photos are all flush-mounted, meaning they are printed directly on the page, so no messing with photo corners or tape. The paper is usually glossy but a little heftier than what you'd find in a magazine. Basic prices for Shutterfly albums range from $25 to $50.

Here's an example of a Shutterfly book:

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I recently made a very special non-wedding related book of my own using a different company that we'd never tried before, Mpix. A 10x10 book with 20 pages and a custom hardcover came out to only $50, and the turnaround time from when I uploaded the finished design to when I received the book in the mail was just five days. The custom hardcover looks incredible in person, and I'm really pleased with how the inside turned out as well. We may use them to print our wedding albums or possibly albums for our parents. Below is an example of an Mpix book:

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Or we may splurge on our wedding album and order one of the gorgeous KISS Books. They don't list their prices online, but I'm thinking they run in the $300 to $400 range. Each book has a black leather cover with thick pages that lay flat when they are opened. Take a look at this beauty below:

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Has anyone had a good experience making their own wedding album? I'm always interested in other options.