Mrs. Ant, New York/Jamaica
Age and Occupation: 25, PhD Student
Fiance's Age and Occupation: 25, Finance
Engagement Date: July 26, 2005
Wedding Date: November 18, 2006
Blogging Since: February 15, 2006
Venue: Rockhouse Hotel
About Me: I live in New York but I'm planning a destination wedding in Negril, Jamaica. My fiance and I are high school sweethearts!
Album Companies
August 23rd, 2007 @ 4:29 pm by Mrs. Ant
I. DIY Album Design
II. Album Design Process
III. Pictobook Album
IV. The Mysterious Album and How to Get One
Although many of these album companies do not sell directly to the public, some are willing to do so. It doesn’t hurt to ask, especially if you seem easy to work with.
Sometimes, the professionals underestimate us brides. I never needed to contact my album-maker’s customer service at all, save once to ask for their price list. Perhaps, in time, album companies will realize that brides are resourceful and competent customers, and they will be happy to have our business. 
I also wanted to mention that most of these albums are not cheap. Furthermore, the companies will probably charge you higher than the wholesale photographer’s rate. But shop around for a few price lists and see what fits into your budget. In my opinion, a high quality album is the best way to present and preserve your wedding memories. For me, it was worth the price.
A big thanks to Weddingbee reader divine, who found this great blog post on album resources by photographer Anne Ruthman. It’s exactly what I wanted to put together for the next installment in this series, but I wasn’t sure if I had the time. Now I can share Anne’s insider expertise with you regarding album companies. Thanks, Anne!Most of the following text and links are from Anne, so you will be reading about albums from a photographer’s perspective. I’ve added a few links as well as some photos with captions.
COFFEE TABLE ALBUMS
These albums have images printed directly onto a double sided, flexible, thin page. Most common printing for a coffee table album is CMYK or InkJet. Binding is either stitch book binding or pinched glue binding. Advantages: very affordable, lightweight, thin page thickness allows for many pages. Disadvantages: less durable over time, colors may vary in printing, clients have easy access to similar albums which may affect their perception of the overall value of this product.
above: Asuka Book is printed on archival fine art papers
above & below: The Vision Art book is also printed on archival fine art papers, but is bound in a way that allows the pages to lay flat when opened (photo source)
FLUSH MOUNT COFFEE TABLE ALBUMS
This is somewhat of a hybrid product in that its pages are thinner than a flush mount library album, but are thicker than a coffee table album. The printing is often done on either true photographic paper or on a dense fine art paper. Each page is printed one sided and is then scored and the pages are glued together to give each page more strength. Advantages: accurate photographic color, medium page thickness allows for more pages. Disadvantages: images may deteriorate over time in the scored creases.
- GraphiStudio
- PictoBooks
- Kiss Wedding Books
- Leather Craftsman 3500
- Art Magazine
- Cornerstone
- White Wedding Albums
- Laguna
above: Graphistudio (photo source)
above: Pictobook
above & below: The KISS book (photo source)
above: Leather Craftsmen 3500 (photo source)
above: Laguna album
FLUSH MOUNT LIBRARY ALBUMS
This album most often consists of photographic pages which are permanently mounted to a dense cardstock or plastic page, resulting in very thick pages. Photographs can be split in the center of a spread to avoid creasing distortion. Advantages: very durable pages, books are more likely to lay flat when open due to binding. Disadvantages: number of pages are often limited due to the thickness, albums can be very heavy (this could also be perceived as an advantage when considering perceived value of product.)
- Leather Craftsman 300
- Zook Book
- Art Leather
- Cornerstone
- BonMatch
- Willowbook
- Capri Album
- Albums Unlimited
- Art Hands Album
- Candid2000
above & below: Zookbook
above: Albums Unlimited Kingston Flushmount (photo source)
MATTED ALBUMS
Even though we group all matted albums together, there are actually different types of matted albums for you to consider. There’s a slip-in matted album which allows you to order your mats and album in advance and you simply fill in the holes with your images, and then there’s a mounted matted album which requires you to send the prints to the album maker who then mounts the prints into the mats for you, or creates custom mats for your images.
above: Zookbinder matted album (photo source)
above: Jorgensen matted album
above: Cypress matted album
CUSTOM ALBUMS
These album makers don’t exactly fit into one of the boxes above. They provide custom products for clients who value originality and customization and are willing to pay extra for that luxury.
above: Queensbury album with custom laser cut mats
above: La Vie albums with custom fold-outs and cut-outs
SELF-MOUNT
Self-mount albums can either look like matted albums or flush mount albums, but the basic principal is that you actually mount the images yourself. This is a product which you can purchase in advance and then create a custom album almost on the spot for a client.
27 Responses to “Album Companies”
Oh thank you so much Mrs. Ant/Divine/Anne! 
I was starting to really worry after the last post of going your route and trying to dodge my photographer’s nasty album fees! I wanted to have really nice albums made for my parents and my FILs.
great job mrs ant!!! thank you thank you for the wonderful images and for putting them all together very nicely 
THANK you THANK you THANK you for breaking down this information! maybe this will help get my butt into gear and finish designing my freaking album! i was so overwhelmed with choices before!
Thank you for putting this post together! I plan on using some of these companies for non-wedding related albums. My photographer is using GraphiStudio (their flushmount is just plain awesome and the mini books are so cute). I do know that they work directly with brides but at double the cost of what they sell to photographers. So in the end, it was worth it to go through my photographer (and more convenient).
Great post/series! Thank you so much for your research!
Thanks Anne and Mrs Ant! This post is so helpful.
Just wanted to add that Laguna is willing to work with brides but also at double the cost of what they offer to photographers (like Graphi).
I think I’m going to contact Kiss next. They are a new, small company and the guys running it seem friendly.
Mrs. Ant - I am always thrilled to see one of your posts. This series is so helpful. THANK YOU!
I’m happy to help. But I must emphasize that I merely added photos and captions to a very educational and comprehensive post by Anne Ruthman. The real credit goes to her!
Great posts. You have been a really helpful resource as usual!
Hi Mrs. Ant! I’m glad I could help shed some light on this subject. Albums are definitely one of the most confusing things out there with so many different options and styles - it can be infinitely overwhelming for both brides and photographers. If you’re a bride who loves to design and you want to make your own album design but order a high-quality “professional only” album, I suggest simply asking your photographer if that’s a possibility- especially before you hire them since it could be a negotiating factor. If they are reasonable, I think they’d be more than happy to let you design your own album and then handle the ordering process for you. Most photographers who offer albums do so as a convenience and an extension of their professional service. Professional albums are more expensive than consumer albums for a large number of reasons, but if designing your own is important to you, it never hurts to ask! Great photographers just want to make sure that their images will end up looking as beautiful as possible, which often means using the highest quality materials that are labor intensive (read: expensive) to produce.
Mrs. Ant - I definitely think you have a gift when it comes to album design and I believe there’s a market when it comes to offering design services to other brides! Especially brides who have high resolution files on disk and have never done anything with them because they just don’t have the time, or have tried doing something and have given up because they became frustrated. I have a feeling it would be a lot more fun than your current full time job!!
PS. After finding this link to the photolovecat blog, I made sure the DIY album making video was working again in case anyone wants to go the extra mile and make their own book too!
Wow, I never knew what all of the different types of albums were. This is very educational.
If anyone is interested, I’m giving a short tutorial on how to take your images from DVD to layout using standard Mac programs. Click on my name for the link
It looks like white wedding album is set up to work directly with individuals to make your own albums.
Sorry if this has already been mentioned but Creative memories now offers a “Story Book” That you layout online with digital images. You can order multiple of the album which I think would be a great gift for parents post wedding.
I definitely agree with Anne Ruthmann’s advice on seeking out your photographer when trying to acquire a professional wedding album. (The difference between consumer albums and professional wedding albums is like day and night!)
We specialize in album design, so if you need ideas on how your album is designed, feel free to take a look at our site: http://www.modernalbumdesigns.com
-Chung Chan
THANK you for all your work in putting this together! I plan on using it when deciding what to do re: my album and photographer. This series has been /incredibly/ helpful.
thank you for all the info…..you have so much knowledge to share!
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Anyone have luck getting the manufacturer of anyone of flush mount album to allow bride’s/public to deal directly?
I should clarify that the white wedding album is indeed quite costly. Have folks found any more cost effective means to do/get a flust mount album?
Thanks for putting together this very informative web page.
This is Tony at Laguna Album.
We do occasionally work directly with brides who have their original images and permission to use them from their photogrpaher.
We go through them and help you select the best ones to tell the story of the wedding. Then we create a custom design.
We are a wholesale company so we charge a retail price to brides in order cover the additional customer service expense and to avoid a conflict of interest with our primary customers, professional photographers.
My husband and I own the rights to our photos. That is a non-issue. Can you tell me what your retail price is?
You may want to try this company that we came across… http://www.exclusivealbums.com. Their prices are great and they are fast.
Yes, we used Exclusive Albums for a sample and it is very good.
