A look inside our wedding album

I don't want to keep bringing up the frustration I felt over our whole photographer situation.  In all honesty, looking back in hindsight, it was what it was and I just need to get over it.  Of course, having a little post wedding shoot last week to capture some of the shots we wanted that we didn't get certainly helped me feel a little less disappointed about all the things that were not done on the day of the wedding.  Even after all that I was upset about, I still can't complain about not having *any* photos that were good from our wedding.  Because there were in fact quite a few that we absolutely loved.

To prove it, I am giving you a sneak peek into our wedding album.  I received this about two months ago, but was holding off on sharing it until I got a little further into my wedding recaps because I didn't want to give away too much.  And I have to give credit to my videographer's wife, Yan Freedline, as a good 25% of the images in this album came from her and *not* our photographer.  There's even a couple that were from our family and friends' cameras.

Check it out:

Click here to view this photo book larger

I designed this photo album myself using Shutterfly.com.  I LOVE Shutterfly!  Their photo albums are high quality and unlike most DIY photo album web sites, they have a huge amount of flexibility and such in the way of templates, options for backgrounds, colors, layouts, adding text, etc.  And to top it off, they are super affordable!  This 12 x 12 inch hard cover album only cost me about $141.00 total for 91 pages including tax and shipping.  And it has about 437 photos from our wedding day in it! 

Now, don't get me wrong, I did time it just right when ordering by waiting until they were having a 20% off sale and also finding a coupon code online for free shipping.  :)

I love this album!  In addition, I made 5 copies of an 8 x 8 soft cover book of about 20 or so pages for each of my bridesmaids.  It had a few photos of me and us getting ready and mostly focused on images of each of them or all of the bridesmaids.  Then I made another 5 copies of an 8 x 8 hard cover book of about 40 pages for each of our moms and the groomsmen (only the ones who were Mr Fix It's brothers).  It was like a mini album of our wedding but focused on their family as well. 

Share time:  Ladies, are you creating your own photo albums or did you go the pro route and have your photographer or a studio design one for you?  What were your thoughts, reviews and other suggestions regarding wedding photo albums?

TODAY'S WEDDING TIP:  When deciding on a photographer, don't feel like you have to contract them for their services as well as a high end wedding photo album.  You can save money by asking them to simply provide you all of the high resolution images on disc format so that you can decide to purchase an album or prints later.  Most photogs offer this nowadays and also offer online services to order individual prints from as well.  You can always go back later and order a high end album or a simple hard cover DIY album from a site like I did.