wedding wednesday // our wedding album is here!

When I arrived home after my quick trip to Las Vegas last week, I had a special package waiting for me on the front step.

Our wedding album had arrived!

I spent the next hour obsessively cleaning the house, taking a shower, lighting my favorite candle and turning on the perfect playlist before letting myself open it up. Why? I have no idea, honestly, other than that I wanted to savor every second of my first time flipping through it!

At this point, over eight months since the big day, I’ve gone through our wedding photos countless times. Our photographer John, who I’ve mentioned many, many times before, and his team did the most phenomenal job of capturing our day. It’s so fun to swipe back through them on my phone from time to time!

But there’s something entirely different, and so much more special, in my opinion, about seeing, holding and literally flipping through a photo album in real life. And let me tell you, my excitement was a hundred percent justified!

 

the process

 

These days, there are so many ways to have an album made. I decided to create ours with our photographer, John Cain. The experience he and his team had offered at every point of the process up to this had been truly luxurious, and I knew relying on the expertise of this studio for this keepsake I’ll have for a lifetime would be well worth it! (That being said, I’m unfortunately unable to fill you in on the “brand” of wedding album, etc, as everything was ordered through the John Cain studio. Please feel free to reach out to them with any questions!)

So, a couple of months ago, my mother and I made our way into John’s studio for our album consultation. We had managed to cull down the thousands of photos from the wedding into a few hundred (!!!) favorites, but there was still much more to do. Over the course of the next three (yes, three!) hours, we managed to cut that number down even further, with the help of coffee breaks, a glass of champagne, and a charcuterie board, of course, until we had the album photos selected.

In hindsight, I am so thankful we had help in doing this. Sam, a member of the John Cain team who helped us with the selection process, was so wise in her advice for selecting the photos we did. She’d bring up things we never would have thought about and helped us narrow down multiple similar photos to the one best shot. I don’t know how we would have done it without her!

Then, it was time to decide the fun extras! I chose the largest size available in a beautiful, soft, greyish blue hue that goes perfectly with the colors in our home. For the front of the album, I decided to have our wedding monogram embossed. My mother ordered one a couple of sizes smaller and in the same shade.

A few weeks later, I jumped on a call with one of the fabulous members of John’s team to go through the album design. We spent over an hour designing and tweaking each page until I felt like it cohesively and beautifully told the story of our day.

Now that I have the physical wedding album in my hands, I am absolutely convinced the process was worth it. One of the unexpected surprises? How much more detail I can thanks to the enlarged photos, like funny moments happening in the background of photos I hadn’t noticed before.

When I was younger, one of my very favorite things to do was pull down my parent’s massive black wedding album (that had individual photos secured to each page) and spend hours pouring over it. It gives me a sense of Deja Vu to do the same, but this time with my own wedding, and I can’t wait to hopefully share that experience with my own children one day!

For now, our wedding album has earned a spot on our built-in bookshelves in our living room, where I can see it whenever I glance in that direction. God bless the poor visitors who come over anytime soon. I have a feeling I’ll be wanting to show it off to whoever steps in!

The joy these physical photos have brought me is truly something special and has inspired me to print many, many more of my favorite images instead of relying on my phone. I’d love to hear your favorite resources for printing photos if this is something you do as well!

Love from the Sunshine State,

Kate

P.S. Make sure you check my Instagram Stories later this evening. I’ll be sharing a few of my favorite pages from the album!

P.P.S. I know I still haven’t shared our reception photos yet, and while this hasn’t been intentional by any means, it has been unexpectedly fun to have a moment from the day that is still private! Obviously, however, I am so excited to share this part of our wedding day with y’all soon, and pinky promise it’s coming. Just didn’t want you to think I had forgotten!

Join in on the fun!

3 Comments

  1. Dana said:

    Costco is the best for getting prints! You can do it all online and the. Just have to go by to pick them up! If you don’t have a membership or a Costco near you, the Kodak machines at Target are also great!

    Published 2.12.20 · Reply
  2. Annaliese said:

    Your album is so beautiful! What a special keepsake of the best day of your life! My grandmother has one of my older cousin’s wedding albums, and it was my favorite thing while growing up to look through it whenever I’d visit her.

    xoxo A
    http://www.southernbelleintraining.com

    Published 2.13.20 · Reply
  3. Kelly said:

    While this post and comments are a few years old at this point, I’d like to share so future readers can have this information.
    If you have professional pictures taken, (especially wedding photos!) have them printed at a professional print lab. The printers available at places like Target, Walmart, Costco, and drugstores do not have the same color readability or print-ability as professional printers. Skin tones will have green color casts, bright golden light will look an awful orange yellow, and the deepest of shadows will have purple/green hues.
    Professional labs also have the convenience of ordering online and most have a 2-3 day turnaround time, professionally packaged and shipped right to your door!
    This is coming from a wedding/portrait photographer, who also uses the same company that your beautiful album came from ;) The company isn’t available to the general public, only professional photographers.

    Published 1.15.23 · Reply