The Book Of Our Love
November 13th, 2007 @ 1:19 pm by Mrs. Flamingo
Mr. Flamingo and I thought it would be nice to offer our parents a nice thank you gift for supporting us during the whole wedding process. So when it came time to think about our parents’ gift, it was a very obvious choice. A book of our love: a photo album.
Images by Blurb.com
Our photographer will give us the copyrights and all our wedding images (hi-resolution) on a DVD. I didn’t want to spend money on a photo album, when I could use my talents and make my own. After searching the net for various software, the one I found to be the most complete is BookSmart from Blurb.com
Images by Blurb.com
I think this will be a great project to do, and the program seems quite complete. You can personalize everything! From the page layout, colors and even the binding. I will be adding small meaningful text in the book as well, like the speech to my dad, the lyrics of our love song, our vows and some little extras. It will be an awesome memento… well I hope so.
Has anyone used Booksmart for their wedding album? What’s your feedback on this software and what little extras did you add to your album?
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19 Responses to “The Book Of Our Love”
I just finished creating our wedding album (I designed it and am having it printed through our photographer). We are also getting some parent’s albums through that company.
But now I’m doing a 240 page honeymoon album through Blurb. I would highly recommend that you design the pages using a different program and put them in as full bleed pages in Blurb. I’m using Photoshop CS3 to create the background and images and adding the words in InDesign. I’ve done a ton of research on this and as long as you keep everything at 300dpi and embed your sRGB color profile you should be fine. I see you’re a graphic designer so I’m sure you know all of this already though. Blurb has some great resources on their blog and forum. And because it’s a wedding album I would suggest that you pay the extra money to get the logo taken off. But remember there will be a barcode on the back of album cover either way (bottom right corner) so don’t put any important pictures down there.
As far as little extras…in our wedding album I put a part of our first dance lyrics behind us as we were dancing, part of our vows, and the list of something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue.
Oh and be careful with the pictures you choose to put on the cover and back cover. There seem to be a lot of complaints with skin tones in these two places so many people put a black and white picture or put pictures without people in them.
HTH!
I think this would be a great guest book idea too. Have pictures and your love story and then a place for your guests to sign (smudgeless pen ) their names and well wishes.
Or create one after the wedding by gathering up all well-wish cards and having the image in the book along with photos of the guest who wrote it at your wedding. You could keep the actual cards with the rest of your wedding keepsakes, but you’d still get to see them in the book.
I think I just found my new favorite site to play on!
I actually wasn’t happy with the quality of my Blurb album - I find the paper stock is better from shutterfly or mypublisher, the photos printed dark like Emily said, and even though all the pictures were from a high resolution camera, they all came out looking grainy. I used it to make our honeymoon album but I’m going to redo it in a different program to get a better quality book.
I made my guest book and thought the colors were pretty much true to color in my case. I didn’t do anything fancy enough in InDesign since I didn’t have enough time pre-wedding. I tried other companies and liked the quality of blurb so far.
Blurb is an up and coming company. They don’t correct for user error like MP or Shutterfly does. If you didn’t correct all the levels on each photo, haven’t calibrated your monitor correctly, or embedded your colors correctly for that printer your pictures will not turn out like you want them to. If you know what you’re doing and have time to do it correctly then you can save a lot of money using Blurb.
I have to agree with Erin, I’ve created both a Blurb and Mypublisher book, and found that the paper was thicker with MP.
I just created my wedding album using MP last week during their 40% off sale!! What was initially a $300 book (99 pages, the max # of pages they allow is 100), came to about $190 including shipping.
I really wish I had seen your post first though, what a great idea to include toasts/vows/song lyrics!! DOH! Too late now… I was working on major a time crunch in order to get the 40% discount. The book finished uploading at midnight, right when the promo ended!! No time for creativity… oh well =D
This si so cool. I’ve seen a bunch of wedding albums that I did not like and they don’t include all of the great pictures guest frequently take. Most inportant they can be horribly expensive when tacked onto your already expensive day. My parents are divorced so they would each need an album plus my in-laws and we want one too…this adds up to well over a thousnad $ and they only have 25 or so pages. Plus I can personalize them for each parent group…pictures of their families and friends and reduce the number of pictures of people they don’t know.
These are a steal even if they will take a lot of work.
What a timely post!! I’m loving all the feedback comments!!
I just began (Sunday night) making my wedding album using Blurb. I’m hoping to complete it in time to give my mom a copy for Christmas. I’m a little disappointed hearing the negative comments. My thoughts while choosing which program to use was that blurb was the cheapest. I’ve never done anything like this before - so I figured I was willing to spend $60 on a trial run.
I’m also adding quotes from the wedding ceremony and special songs to personalize it! I’m such a perfectionist that it is taking a bit of time to create - each page is a little easier though. I’m very excited to see the finished product!!
Gotta say, I made four books of vacation photos using My Publisher, Shutterfly, Picaboo, and Blurb as a test-run before doing my wedding albums. The quality from Blurb was by far the worst. The pages felt thinner, the color wasn’t as true….yeah, really don’t have good things to say. Shutterfly and MP would get my business again easily, but Blurb? Never again.
Ok - you guys have convinced me. Screw my 10+ hours I’ve already put into the blurb book!
I just checked out the My Publisher site and they have a coupon code for buy one get one free 
I’m sold. I’m not sure if I love the 15×11.5 option - but that’s what it’s going to be!
I’m off to start over! Wish me luck!
My final comment of the night. The layout options in My Publisher are pretty boring compared with Blurb. I feel very limited!! The upside - without all the options I should be able to fly through the design!
How are the options in the other programs??
you know, i created a 300-page wedding album with blurb, and i thought that their quality was pretty good! Their prices cant be beat, and i loved that fact that you had tons of options for layout and pages. I didnt find the color to be too dark; maybe it was something from the original camera and quality of the photo file. I loved the finished product. The only thing i suggest is that after you receive your finished album, take the time to look at each picture individually, because i found that my cousin had a 3rd ear! =) Blurb fixed it though, although i had to send back the entire album to them (no charge to me!).
I agree with all of the comments re: My Publisher. I used it for my wedding album. It was easy to put together and for the price the quality isn’t bad. Good luck!: )
I’m a photographer, and I just made a sample book on Blurb to try it out for pet clients hesitant to pay for top-quality books like Asukabook and VisionArt. It hasn’t arrived yet, so I can’t speak for its quality. However, PDN (a very respected magazine for photographers) gave Blurb a very positive review. Separately, after ordering books by MyPublisher and Shutterfly, I would never recommend ordering something as precious as a wedding album from them. In these cases, you really get what you pay for.
I agree that MP does have way more limited layouts than Blurb. I think Shutterfly was the best of both worlds–the quality was a fraction lower than MP’s, but the layouts were soooo much better. I know other people have had good experiences with Blurb, but I certainly didn’t.
No matter what, good luck!
I just ordered a blurb book to try it out, and i can let you know how I like it, but I’ll say this. I started with Kodak Gallery books, which are pretty juvenile in terms of what you can do, but look nice for the price. I made one on MyPublisher and I don’t think I will again. I didn’t like the small amount of layout options and I thought the picture quality was terrible. I might go back to Kodak Gallery if I don’t like Blurb…
I’m a mess. I’m now giving Shutterfly a try. I figure I’ll create about 10 pages in each (blurb, my publisher, and shutterfly) then decide. I really like the BOGO deal at My Publisher - but gosh the layouts are annoying me!!
I better choose one quick though! Hubby is fast getting irritated that I spend every night glued to my laptop! I really want to get this knocked out though so I can start working on my Christmas cards and making presents for people!! Maybe I need to take him to the library to pick up some books - that way he won’t be too bored over the next 2 months - or else I can train him to use the paper cutter and help me make the Christmas cards! (yea - that’ll happen!)
Let me just say this site is the best for hearing real life advice, opinions, feedback, and ideas! All bee’s and readers rock
[...] Weddingbee highlights Blurb and wedding albums in their post “The Book of Our Love”. Don’t pass up the great ideas posted in the comments section. And Mommy Poppins followed with their blog post on great gift book ideas. [...]
Mrs. Flamingo, Montreal, Canada
Age and Occupation: 25, Graphic Designer
Fiance's Age and Occupation: 30, Nursing Student
Engagement Date: December 2004
Wedding Date: June 21, 2008
Venue: Imperia Hotel (modern chic hotel)
About Me: I am a passionate designer who loves anything pretty. I heart all paper products (eco-friendly of course). My passion revolves around anything considered glamour; vintage and modern. In my free time, I love reading Martha mags, designing jewelry and making a pit-stop at Starbucks for a chai latte. I'm also a chocoholic at heart and my family drools over my homemade truffles.
I used Blurb recently and loved the outcome (and the price!). The only thing I was disappointed with was that that photos all printed a little darker than what was showing up on my screen. The colors all look a little bit muted. If I did another one I might try to compensate for it a little.