Wedding Blog
I know I made noise about making a Kolo Album for our parents for Christmas, but in the end, I just couldn’t choose only 30 pictures to include in the album, so I went the Blurb route instead. I considered an Mpix assembled album for a while, which I’m sure makes much higher quality albums, but the $200+ price tag (times 3, for 3 sets of parents) turned me off a bit. Blurb’s free book making software was easy to use and in less than a week the books arrived at our doorstep! I thought I’d pass on a few things I learned about Blurb’s books. I chose the hardcover ImageWrap option and premium paper.
I’d use a BOLDER font on the cover. Especially on the spine, where the text is white on black, it is a little hard to read.
The quality of the color of the ImageWrap is not as great as if you bought a hardcover book with a dust jacket. The colors are a bit washed out. That being said, I still like the ImageWrap option and would use it again, but if you’re looking for crisper, truer images on your book cover, go with the standard dust jacket option.
The premium paper is nice and thick, and the images are crisp. I’d say you can could compare the printing to a really nice, high-end glossy catalog.
One thing to note is to not put images (like the one below) with the focal point near the middle of the book. The books don’t open up flat, so you’ll lose a little of the image. I should have flipped this image horizontally before adding it to the book, so that Mr. Peng was on the outside edge of the book.
I tried to take a really close up shot of the images, but I guess it’s still somewhat hard to tell what the printing looks like. You can see, though, that there is no loss of detail, and the photo colors are pretty true.
I even printed our wedding invitation in the front.
I can honestly say that for the price difference of a Blurb book vs. an album, that the Blurb gives you huge bang for your buck. This book of 50 images (one image per page) cost $35, whereas a pro album would have cost well into the hundreds. I would have also added more than 50 images! At the time I thought that 50 was a lot of images, but the book is seriously thin, and I had 700+ images to pick from, so I should have added more!
This by no means can take the place of a pro album though; you have to remind yourself that this is a book, not a photo album. All in all, I’m really happy with the Blurb book, and am thinking of printing out yearly books of our photos, so we can have them neatly catalogued by year!
I’ve never made a book before so I have nothing to compare this one to, but I’d love to hear your feedback on other book/album companies out there!
What’s your favorite book making/album service? Do you have any advice as to what companies are better than others?
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No advice, I have not used any before, just want to say this looks great! I love this idea! 
I did a blurb book of our engagement pictures as a signature book for our wedding and was happy with the results. The book is beautiful. I was happy to hear that Blurb has premium pages so I’m looking forward to using them for the parents albums.
Wow, the book looks great! Thanks so much for the detailed assessment. I’m thinking about doing photobooks of our pictures in addition to our album, so specific information like your recommendation to use a bold font on the cover is wonderful.
Thanks for all the advice! I’m in the process of making a book for my girlfriends and your suggestions will definitely will help.
Ditto the thanks! There are so many companies out there it’s hard to choose. Has anyone use inkubook? I have a free book coupon code from them but I want to know its worth my time before I start designing my book. Thanks!
I actually recently used Mpix to make albums for our parents– not the assembled one, but the custom hard cover book. I think it might still be a little pricier than Blurb, but I like that with the Mpix software, you can change your layouts and make them custom. Paper is as heavy as the Blurb heavy paper. Overall, I think end result was ok… but then again I think i just had higher expectations for mpix.
Blurb is my favorite. I have made several books with them. Though I don’t use their layouts I felt a little too restricted, but it is really easy to make them in photoshop.
I used MyPublisher. I am doing books for the parents and grandparents for christmas and I like the buy one get one free coupon
I was happy with their print quality and they are pretty fast with the printing and shipping.
Pengy, so cute! I want to make a book with our engagement photos- that is if I ever get them in the mail!! uggg.
After you last post I got my lazy tush in gear and I ordered our Blurb book. I’m just waiting for it to come in the mail now. Hope ours turns out at well as yours did!
Oh and one more thing, right before I placed the order I googled to see if there were any coupons available and I found one that ended up saving us $16 on our order. Score! The whole googling of coupons online was a little trick that I believe Mrs. Coconut taught me. Thanks!
Hello birdies, nice to see you again! The book looks fantastic, seriously can’t beat the price… yo mama gonna loooove it!
I’ve tried lots of the different options out there, and Blurb is hands down, my favorite. For a quick and dirty book, I just throw pictures in their pre-existing layouts, and for something fancier, I design it myself in Photoshop and import the pages in. Far better than the other companies I’ve tried out, and the price is right!
I’ve only ever used My Publisher and i was really happy with how it turned out. There were multiple binding and layout options. The pictures turned out great! The price was reasonable as well, though I think yours was a little bit cheaper. Great service though!
@eveline: what kind of pen did you use for the signature book? I was thinking of doing the same thing, but was worried about smudging if the pages are glossy. Would I have to use a sharpie?
Thanks for all the tips!! I am definitely doing these for our parents (all 4 sets!)
Does anyone know how the Blurb books compare to other books that you can order through KodakGallery or Shutterfly? I have ordered books through the other two and they’re great for documenting vacations and you can’t beat the price, but they are definitely not as elegant as professional wedding albums.
I am in the process of making a blurb book w/ pics from my high school reunion trip to Chicago. Thanks for the tips - I have a thin font for the title, and I’ll go make it bold!
I’ve never done Blurb books but have done others using Snapfish, Kodak Gallery and Shutterfly.
Shutterfly by far is the best of those three. The best part of Shutterfly is that they have a community where you can see the projects from other users and get ideas. The quality of the pages and the cover is very good and it has the most options when it comes to layouts, page designs and covers.
Check my project from the first time me and my fiance went on vacation.
No advice, just love the book! I may have to make one of these with our engagement pictures!
damn, where the hell were you last week with this post before i bought mine!? i did two of them (i tried snapfish and inkubook), and now i’ll prolly end up with a bunch of faces in the crease.
oh and as usual… ‘awesome!’
i love blurb book too! i made my honeymoon pics and it turned out really well!
quick question…. what was the picture resolution that you uploaded at? did you use any of your guests pics or all from your pro photographer?
I have used Blurb for cookbooks, travel albums and plan on using it for our wedding photos. I love them! I use Adobe Illustrator to make my own page layouts because although they have dozens of potential layouts it can be restricting. It is easy to incorporate them.
@Christine: I only used pro pics, and they were seriously gigantor huge size. They were 300 pixels per inch, and like 4000×3000 in size (they were scaled down in the blurb books). I’d love to know what regular non pro pics look like!
Looks great Penguin. I really need to get crakin on mind. Guess they wont be ready for xmas though 
This is so helpful. I plan on putting our engagement pictures, scans of our old love letters, and some old pictures together as a guest book, so I’ll probably follow your lead and go with Blurb.
ahhh! I wish I knew about this earlier! I just had a book printed up by Snapfish for a friend who had a very, very budget wedding and I was the “photographer” with a silly point and shoot. I thought it would be nice to give them an album of some sort because they didn’t even have one of the wedding. The Snapfish book quality is just awful. I was VERY disappointed. It cost $20 for 20 pages. Ridiculous. I would gladly have paid more for Blurb. It looks great!
I totally love that idea. I actually put one together as a Christmas gift for a friend that hasn’t had the chance to see our son yet. I used MyPublisher simply because Costco offered a 20% discount for members. I’ll let you know how it turn out.
Thanks for the tips! I’m in the middle of creating a blurb book for our guest book, and I’ll definitely keep these things in mind.
Your book looks amazing! I love the cover shot. I made a Blurb book as our wedding sign in book. I used photos from our engagement shoot on the Brooklyn Bride and had a pic of us walking towards the photographer on the cover and a pic of us walking away (our backs) on the back. I used the blue grid background choice and left a lot of room around the images for guests to sign. The quality was great and we got so many compliments. I’ve made Apple books before and I think the quality was comparable but Blurb was more affordable.
Hi Pengy!!!!!!!! I did both mypublisher books and blurb. Both have their advantages. I think mypublisher converted to thicker paper too. The advantage of mypublisher the buy one get 1 free. Or the consistent savings program they have with costco. Blurb I love the image wrap but agree the quality is lost… so I’m in the middle of submitting my sister’s album and I’m still not sure which to go for. I guess it comes down to budget… booo!
Thanks for posting this! I haven’t been able to see a blurb book up close, so this is fantastic.
And THANK YOU for the suggestion to put the invitation in electronically! We don’t have any left over invites (we even sent out the “extras”), and I was bummed. But since I designed them myself, I have the electronic file. Duh! So obvious, but I NEVER would have thought of it.
sorry for the silly question but what’s the difference between one of these picture books and an actual wedding album? Is the wedding album simply a more comprehensive account of the wedding while a picture book showcases highlights/fave pics?
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Mrs. Penguin, Northern California
Age and Occupation: 27, Weddingbee Editor in Chief
Fiance's Age and Occupation: 30, Doctor of Physical Therapy
Engagement Date: January 29, 2007
Wedding Date: June 7, 2008
Blogging Since: September 14, 2007
Venue: Winery in the Gold Country
About Me: I love the Spice Girls, dogs with underbites, bean burritos, making messes, high fives, avoiding showers, crossword puzzles, blogs, weddings, and blogs about weddings!
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