Weddingbee Blog

On our honeymoon in Paris, I took a ton of photos during our sightseeing adventures into the city of love.  We wanted to create a large hardcover photo album of all the memories we captured during our honeymoon, so I created one through Blurb Books. They have an excellent holiday promotion going on - I got $10 off my very first book design!

The book looks so cute! I used one of our favorite photos of the Louvre for the cover. We arrived there just as the museum opened up - I love how serene the Louvre looks without the crowds of tourists. I designed the cover using Adobe Photoshop and added my own whimsical font to match the style of the photo album.

Here’s a close-up of the front cover. The font came out so clear and I love the faded design around the edges.

The book cost a little under $50 with shipping and I included about 160 pages of photos.

For the spine of the book I stretched the front cover photo all the way around so that you can see a slice of the Louvre.

Flipping through the book, the pages are pretty good in quality. I kind of wish the pages were thicker so that the book will last for a longer time. If you plan to create a large book that includes more than 100 pages, the hardcover version might be a better option than the softcover because the binding will be stronger and you’ll have less chances of the pages falling out.

And lastly, the back cover of the book. I added another favorite photo that reminds us of our bicycle cake topper. I wish the barcode wasn’t there because it kind of ruins the design and makes the photobook appear less personal.

The pros about using Blurb Book: The software is very easy to use and there are a large variety of photo design layouts that you can use throughout the book. Just drop the photos in the page layout and you’re done! It’s pretty simple to use and it’s very easy to upload to the website. The customer service is fairly good, and if you’re not happy with the quality you can always return the book to get a refund.

The cons about using Blurb Book: I kind of wish the pages were better in quality; a little thicker. I noticed the quality of the pages inside is about the same as My Publisher and Shutterfly’s photobooks. I made sure before ordering the book that all the photos were sharp and clear, and I noticed in the final products a few photos turned out blurred in comparison.

I guess overall I’m quite happy with the quality of the Blurb photobook. It’s great for the price you pay for the book and you have a lot of design layouts to choose from. I think I’ll consider trying other photobook companies, such as Lulu.com and PicaBoo.com for our future travel destinations. If anyone else has other photobook recommendations or would like to share experiences using Blurb, please feel free to comment!