Creating a Custom Wedding Album

Most of the weddings I photograph are at least a year in the making, if not more. Planners and clients spend months dreaming and planning, curating and finalizing every tiny detail. But there’s one thing that’s left after all the planning and festivities—the photos. And a custom wedding album, preserving those wonderful memories, may be the most cherished possession you pass along from generation to generation.

An Unforgettable Wedding

I see it all the time. 

In the consuming process of creating your most meaningful day, the wedding album is the absolute last thing on your mind. As it should be! There are so many creative places to put your attention during the planning phase. In order to create an unforgettable event, you focus on the incredible food, the fantastic florals, the painstakingly chosen decor and each perfectly curated outfit suited to each event. Each of these elements are invaluable pieces of the complex puzzle that creates a once in a lifetime experience. 

But their existence is often limited to a day—or even—hours.
In contrast, the photos that are captured will live on to tell your story. 

Photographs may be the most cherished possession we pass along from generation to generation. 

Think of your most cherished photographs. Oftentimes, without them, the memory itself can be lost forever.

But getting around to the photos post-wedding can feel like a chore after the great effort of planning and executing the events.

Or—may I propose—that it can be an incredibly creative and meaningful process.

To ensure that these important moments remain unforgettable, I recommend doing something you will never, ever regret: have a custom wedding album made to preserve it all.

My Approach to Your Custom Wedding Album

When I started in this industry, about 15 years ago (gasp!) the wedding albums were pretty cut and dry. Literally, I would choose the images and slide them into the templates of classic leather albums and  bound pages! They were straightforward and simple (which I still like). But aside from the images themselves, they were hardly unique to the couple or their celebrations. 

Fast forward fifteen years and we are still committed to timeless quality. But our approach to creating albums unique to each couple has evolved with the times.

I intentionally take a select number of weddings per year, which allows me to be very ‘hands on’ with each couple’s image process. In fact, I still curate each image collection and create each album draft myself. 

Seeing a thousand (or so) images translated into one hundred (or so) pages of an album design feels a bit like being a film director. I take hours and hours of “footage” and weave it together cinematically to tell a story. It’s one of my favorite, and frankly, most important parts of the entire wedding process.

Creating a custom wedding album for one of my clients is not an afterthought. It’s the next step in telling their story.

I love to design the first draft of an album utilizing this storytelling vision. I outline all the key events and strive to tell the story of the wedding in its entirety. My vision for each album typically results in a one to two-volume series of books to showcase the full experience.

A Personalized Heirloom

In order to create an album uniquely suited to each couple and wedding, I work with a custom bindery. Priscilla Foster Handmade designs and creates personalized, handmade books that will become one of your most important heirlooms. 

Priscilla Foster has been creating handmade heirloom albums for over twenty years. She says, “I don’t think I would have been able to survive this long as a bookbinder if I had not been granted so many opportunities to push the boundaries of my craft, and for that I am eternally grateful.”

We work together with Priscilla to bring the design of each album to life through custom design proposals. Each book becomes a reflection of the celebration, and more importantly, of the couple themselves:

“From a beautiful custom crest designed by a talented illustrator printed on an opening vellum overlay, to integrating a material used in a custom invitation or commissioning a hand painted vignette of a beloved fur-baby that we then turn into a giclée printed endpaper, we are passionate about creating what we feel is a collaborative representation of a special day.”

— Priscilla Foster

Custom Wedding Album Design

Using elements from a wedding’s design, Priscilla envisions an album cover reflective of the events. We might incorporate a custom monogram, some fabric or ribbon from a gown, or custom illustrations from the invitation suite or ceremony program.

“We have made cover material from hand-embroidered Otomi fabric to the remnant lace of a wedding veil. And although we have a couple key fabric houses that supply our sixty “standard” fabrics that we turn into our book cloth, we have also been known to scour the globe for just the right shade of silk velvet.

We have also recently begun incorporating different custom fabric treatments such as embroidery and digitally printed fabric which has opened up a whole new realm of possibilities.” 

It is these possibilities that make the final albums true pieces of art.

“…anything handmade, by definition, is imbued with care and love simply by the energy that is transferred in the making…”

— Priscilla Foster

One of the most beautiful elements we’ve recently incorporated was a colorful, embroidered monogram on pristine white linen. And the hand-painted vignette of the couple’s beloved dog was the perfect final touch on the last page.

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I also love some of the laser-etching we’ve applied to a recent album, direct from their invitation. I find personal satisfaction in an album that isn’t a reflection of my aesthetic choices, but of the style of the couple woven into timeless design.

A Handmade Legacy

The custom wedding albums I deliver to my clients are products of a true craft. Priscilla Foster’s work is of the highest quality and completely handmade in her beautiful Montana studio. It is this level of artisanship that I’m so proud to support and am so pleased to share with my clients, friends and family.

I firmly believe that true craft will never go out of style. There will always be a place for it because of those of us who truly appreciate what it represents.

I love Priscilla’s take on this work too:

“I recall reading an article about “lights off manufacturing” a couple of years ago and realized that a world that seeks to automate manufacturing to the point where humans (and therefore lighting) become obsolete, is no kind of world at all. I feel so fortunate to have carved out a life of peaceful resistance as a “lights on” handmade bookbinder, creating heirlooms for co-conspirators like KT with a skilled hand, a collaborative mind and an open heart.”

It’s with that open heart and collaborative mind that, together, we relish in creating these one-of-a-kind custom wedding albums for my clients. 

Ultimately, it’s the final step to a process that was years in the making. And we are honored to be creating heirlooms that will be cherished as couple’s build their legacy together. 

Below are some of the creations we’ve collaborated on over the years, for my clients.

Enjoy!

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Emily + Alex

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Jaime + Matt

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Elizabeth + Andrew

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Rachel + Brad

Nissa + Derrick

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Cheryl + Sam

Emily + Zander

If you never got around to creating your wedding album, and these beautiful books have sparked your imagination—you know where to find me.