Latest Wedding Album Trends

An important part of planning a wedding is hiring a good photographer. It costs couples $1,000-$8,000+ for incredible photos, so why do so many wedding budgets forget about the album? It would be a shame to throw your precious memories in a drawer!

Wedding albums are still relevant and essential in our modern digital landscape. Think about it - are you going to plug in a hard drive and scroll through your wedding photos with your friends? Probably not! But, we guarantee you’ll spend hours reliving your big day when it’s contained in a beautifully bound album. Wedding albums are far from trendy - in fact, they’ll outlast digital!

A fantastic portrait of you and your honey will stand out
as a front-and-center album cover option.

Why Should You Invest in A Wedding Photo Album?

Wedding photo albums aren’t just capable of creating an emotional impact; they’re also easy to make and surprisingly durable. Here’s why you shouldn’t forget to order your album:

Wedding Photo Albums Are Emotional

Investing in wedding photography is a no-brainer for most couples. After all, we want to share our wedding day with our friends and family for years to come. Even our own parents, friends, and family members take the time to share their own memories with us through photographs.

A wedding album can help strengthen our relationship with others and organize our most precious moments in an easy-to-read format. Our wedding albums tell a chronological story of what happened, which allows us to reminisce on one of the most important days of our lives.

Wedding Photo Albums Last Forever

Besides the emotional gratification wedding photo albums can offer, photo albums are also flexible, easy to make, durable, and customizable. While uploading your photos to a computer may seem like a good idea at first, technology isn’t as reliable as you think it is. Looking at the advancement of technology, once popular storage methods like floppy disks are a thing of the past so it’s easy to assume that CDs, hard drives, and USB drives may follow suit. Digital photographs and backups don’t last forever.

However, wedding photo albums are an inexpensive, simple, and stylish way to keep your memories technology-proof. If you purchase a good-quality wedding album photo book (which will only set you back $50 to $100), you’ll be able to pass it on to your children or grandchildren.

Relive each and every moment from your wedding like it was yesterday with a photo album 

Quick Tips for Your Wedding Photo Album

Wedding photo albums have been popular since large wedding ceremonies became a trend over a century ago. Here are a few timeless trends that we love and highly recommend for your album:

Put Your Photos in Chronological Order

Wedding photo albums are designed to be showcased in chronological order, so you likely have a bunch of photographs that play into this format. You probably have photos of the finer details, images of you getting ready, and these other great shots from our ultimate wedding shot list.

Most wedding photo albums will start with a scene-setter, providing context for the rest of the book, and end with a parting shot taken of the couple. While you don’t have to create a chronological album, following a documentary format of your day will help you remember and relive every moment like it were yesterday.

Photo Album Size = Wedding Party Size

A small to medium-sized wedding won’t require as many photographs as a large-sized wedding, so most couples purchase an album relative to the wedding party size or the event’s length.

As a rule, a small to medium-sized wedding will need an album that holds up to 64 board pages (or 32 spreads). This gives you enough room to touch on several key moments of your wedding, such as the first look, family photos, the wedding party, the ceremony, reception, and the toast.

On the other hand, some large-sized weddings may need an album that holds 200 board pages (or 100 spreads) if they want to follow more modern, simplistic album spread trends.

Protect Your Book with Album Covers

Capturing wedding memories in print is half the battle because even the most secure albums will need some form of protection. It’s very common for couples to purchase a wooden album cover that’s either lacquered or water and bug resistant, so your albums stay beautiful longer.

Still, the best way to protect and maintain your book long-term is by purchasing one with premium paper. Choose hardcovers and ultra-thick paper that hold up well against tears, bends, spills, dust, and anything else that can wreck your book. Pair these selections with an album cover and your album will stand the test of time - literally.

put your photos in chronological order to remind you of the day's events

Popular Wedding Photo Albums Trends 

Wedding trends come and go, but for the most part, wedding photo album trends have stayed the same. However, there are trends we noticed that set the bar for the perfect timeless album.

Less is More - Let Your Photos Do the Talking

Although the Gen Z trend “maximalism” is overtaking “minimalism,” a big Millennial trend, the latest photo album must-haves are still within the Millennial domain. Still, it isn’t like Gen Z doesn’t understand the popular phrase “a picture is worth a thousand words” because it’s likely their photo albums will mostly include photographs. However, an on-trend yet timeless wedding album considers clutter to be anything else on the page that isn’t a photograph.

Wedding photo album spreads are still minimalistic, typically include one, two, or three photos per page, and usually feature a lot of whitespace or thick borders that separate each photo.

Adding Scrapbooking Elements to Spreads

Although wedding photo albums still take a minimalistic approach, we’ve seen an uptick in albums that combine scrapbooks and photo books. Scrapbook albums are common in rustic weddings.

While some wedding photo albums only used self-adhesive photo corners to attach Polaroids to paper albums, we’ve also seen albums that attach frames to their Polaroids. Couples may also include flower stickers, wedding invitations, and physical items from the ceremony or reception.

We didn’t see a lot of text anymore, which isn’t surprising considering most couples don’t add text to their photo albums at all. But, most couples make an exception for covers and the first page.

Combining Physical Print and Digital Backups

Earlier on in this article, we recommended against storing your photos on a hard drive, but if you’re also getting a physical album, then you should definitely back up your photos right away.

Many couples agree that backing up your photos is smart, and many companies are listening. It’s now common to see online wedding book businesses combine their physical books with a digital copy, so their customers can reprint their wedding photo album again if they need to.

Backups are a good way to store photos that didn’t make the cut. All of your fun wedding party photo ideas will still have a place in an external hard drive, even if they aren’t in your book.

Preference Towards Acrylic Album Covers

Leather, hardcover, and soft cover wedding albums have always been common, but acrylic albums are becoming the new popular kid in town. Glass is also a favorite for some couples.

However, glass isn’t something we’d use on a wedding album because there’s a high possibility it will break. Even if the glass is thick and treated, you wouldn’t want to keep a decorative album in reach of your children. Acrylic can mimic glass if you really want a translucent cover.

Plus, acrylic is super inexpensive and is easier to work with than glass. You can also use it to further protect the album cover underneath, which is a win-win if your cover includes a photo.

No-Fuss/Easy Layouts and Templates

Do-it-yourself wedding albums have a reputation for being time-consuming, but that isn’t the case! If you use a template, you can make a stunning wedding photo album in 10 minutes.

You can absolutely create a wedding album from scratch, either by using a design program or an online photo book website. But you probably won’t need to. There are plenty of templates you can find for any wedding of any size. You can even adjust the album’s colors and theme.

Don’t forget to customize the front and back cover! They’ll be the first thing your guests see if you want to use your wedding photo album as a coffee table book or decorative piece.

Add special additions like invitations and save the dates
as scrapbooking elements to your album.

Perfection Isn’t the Photo Album Goal 

No one’s perfect, but it can be hard to think that when your social media feeds bombard you with people who look a certain way. It can make us feel pressured to up our photography game. While there’s we're sure you'll look incredible on your wedding day, it’s important to be authentic.

Let your wedding photo album show the imperfect sides of you: the full-mouthed laugh, the sincere, silly smile, and the tears that fall as you see your partner for the first time. These images really capture your honest emotions in a way that posed photoshoots never could.

And what's more perfect than being your true, beautiful self in front of all your friends and family on your wedding day? Your wedding album deserves to feature those unreplicable shots.

***

Guest Post Contributor: Nadine Westwood | nomadicnadine.com