The Custom Wedding Album: Creating A Timeless Keepsake With KT Merry

From Moments to Memories

Most of the weddings I photograph are at least a year in the making, if not more. Planners and clients spend months dreaming, planning, curating, and finalizing every single tiny detail. 

But there’s one thing that’s left after all the planning and festivities—the memories. 

A custom wedding album, preserving those wonderful memories, may be the most cherished possession you pass along from generation to generation.

Chronicling An Unforgettable Wedding

It’s a common oversight. Amid the whirlwind process of orchestrating your most significant day, the wedding album often gets pushed to the back burner. After all, there are countless creative elements vying for your attention during the planning phase.

To construct an unforgettable celebration, you pour your heart into selecting mouth-watering cuisine, vibrant floral arrangements, carefully chosen decor, and meticulously coordinated outfits for each event. Each of these components forms an irreplaceable piece of the intricate mosaic that shapes your once-in-a-lifetime experience.

However, the lifespan of these elements is often fleeting, existing only for a day or mere hours. In contrast, the photographs taken will endure, providing a timeless narrative of your special day.

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

However, post-wedding, the task of properly organizing and archiving the photos can seem daunting, especially after the exhaustive effort put into planning and implementing the events. Yet, this process can transform into an incredibly creative and rewarding endeavor.

To ensure that these important moments remain unforgettable, I recommend doing something you will never, ever regret—having 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 wedding 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 wedding 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, one of the 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 a wedding album utilizing this storytelling vision. I outline all the key events, chronologically, 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 a wedding album uniquely suited to each couple and celebration, I work with a custom bindery. Priscilla Foster Handmade designs and creates personalized, handmade book bindings that will house your custom wedding album. 

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 Cover Design

Using elements from a wedding’s design, Priscilla envisions a distinct album cover reflective of the events. We might incorporate a bespoke monogram, textured fabric, delicate 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 bookcloth, 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.” 

— Priscilla Foster

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 Priscilla and I recently incorporated into a custom wedding album 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.

I also love some of the laser-etching we’ve applied to a recent album, direct from their invitation. I find personal satisfaction from creating a wedding album that mirrors not my aesthetic preferences, but the unique style of the couple it’s designed for.

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.”

— Priscilla Foster

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 couples build their legacy together. 

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

Enjoy!

---

Eunice + Mikey

Emily + Alex

Jaime + Matt

Elizabeth + Andrew

Rachel + Brad

Nissa + Derrick

Cheryl + Sam

Tori + Daniel

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.