Going the Cheapo Album Route

Going the Cheapo Album Route

October 4th, 2010 @ 6:47 pm by Mrs. Lamb
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This is the story of how we ended up with 3 wedding albums. It all started by wanting to save money.

While many albums are absolutely gorgeous (and drool worthy, believe me, I’ve drooled), we weren’t sold on the idea of spending $1000+ for our wedding album. I searched a lot of sites, I looked at Adorama based on recommendations, and I just wasn’t feeling anything. I didn’t want to start from scratch and design pages in InDesign. I didn’t care about the book laying flat. Long story short, I just about gave up on getting an album.

Ewe Mother wouldn’t hear of it, though. She wanted an album and she wanted it yesterday. So she suggested Shutterfly. I had made a little album of our engagement pictures for free thanks to a coupon. My mom had really liked that one and requested another of our wedding with a leather cover. So, I started to experiment. It turns out that I really liked the storyboard method of choosing photographs. I really liked the limited layout choices (too many choices makes me freeze). I liked it so much, that I made one for my parents, Mr. Lamb’s parents, all of our grandparents and one for ourselves.

(I love my woolly counterpart in the background - this is our new life, me blogging and taking pictures around him doing homework!)

When our album arrived, I was really excited. We sat on the couch, tearing off the orange cardboard box. We ooohed. We ahhed. We reminisced. Then we saw that one page printed twice (their bad) and that I had cropped one photo too close so it was blurry (my bad).

After updating the page where I made a mistake, I called customer service. They were great and said they’d reprint it right away! Yay!

After opening the second album, I immediately saw a problem. The binding was loose. Also, they reprinted from the previous file, so my mistake was still there.

I called customer service. Again, they were great and said that they would a credit in my account so that I could change my mistake and have it reprinted at my convenience.

About a month later, I got everything together and was ready to hit order. There was no voucher in my account. It had expired. Sigh. Another call to customer service cleared it up, they put the credit back into my account and I ordered the third album. Thankfully the third album was just dandy.

I’m very pleased with the print quality and the colors. I love the full page pictures.

I’m just a little bummed about having to reprint so many times, but customer service was helpful each time.

And my experience didn’t stop me from ordering a small album for our honeymoon as well!

Was an album important to you? Would you consider a DIY album?

Tags: albums, norfolk |

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21 Responses to “Going the Cheapo Album Route”

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Member

Theresa90405 (message) 1,217 posts, Bumble bee

Looks great!! I did our wedding album through shutterfly too.

We simply couldn’t afford a professional album through our photographer.

And I settled on Shutterfly when I came upon a 60% off coupon.

The thing I loved most about it was that I was able to include soooo many pictures from the whole weekend and not just the wedding day.

It ended up being like a super awesome yearbook and it’s so much fun to look through.

It’s also been a great coffee table book/conversation piece whenever we have people over.

10/4/10 @ 7:10 pm (reply)

Member

SuperShopper (message) 866 posts, Busy bee

This is a great post!! I’m planning to go the DIY route too… and shutterfly is probably the way I’ll be most comfortable with! Good to hear that they were so easy to work with.

10/4/10 @ 7:10 pm (reply)

Guest

canadiandeev

I did Shutterfly too, and we LOVE it…I did 4 little books for my ‘maids, and one for my parents. The great thing about it was that I was able to do the ENTIRE day for our wedding album, a ‘maid centric one for my ladies, including the bach party and all the fun leading up to the big day, and a parent centric one for my parents…I LOVE shutterfly! And your book looks like the same style we chose - big fan!

10/4/10 @ 7:15 pm (reply)

Guest

hcastellano

I actually used Picaboo because I found they had more selection in terms of covers, layouts and editing then most of the other DIY sites. The book is GORGEOUS leather and we LOVE IT!!!! Check out the link to the book below:
http://app.picaboo.com/WebView/Project.aspx?clientID=ac8f690f5bcc7884ce7549a78f1fba4b&version=51820&siteID=FB-ViaPreview

10/4/10 @ 7:16 pm (reply)

Member

kpenner (message) 23 posts, Newbee

We are probably going to order through blurb–our photog says awesome things about it! Plus, my MIL-to be refers to my wedding day as “family photo day,” so I know I’ll need a…ahem…few albums…

10/4/10 @ 7:21 pm (reply)

Member

autumnwilson (message) 59 posts, Worker bee

I use mixbook.com! I made my guestbook on their site and I use if for my clients. A 20 page book runs around 40.00…their customer service is awesome and they have templates where you simply drop the photos in or you can do it all from scratch. I also got our invites from them. I designed them myself and got 60 for 40.00! Check them out!!

10/4/10 @ 7:35 pm (reply)

Member

LittlestBirds (message) 2,605 posts, Sugar bee

We’ve decided to go the pro route, though they are crazy expensive that way. I think we’ll be happy we did, though it does suck to have to put off other major home purchases for a bit because of something that seems so small.

10/4/10 @ 7:48 pm (reply)

Member

soonerpsych (message) 1,898 posts, Buzzing bee

We get one pro album with our photographer’s package, but we’ll be doing some through either Shutterfly or Snapfish too. I’m the opposite with layout choices though, I want to be able to custom my own layout so I haven’t picked site to use yet because I’m not 100% sold on any of their layouts.

10/4/10 @ 7:57 pm (reply)

Member

Cant pick a date (message) 165 posts, Blushing bee

I will be going the DIY route. After nearly passing out at the price of photographers I ended up finding someone who is “retired” for crazy cheap- her only stipulation- she WANTS to just give me a CD with the pictures and have me do my own thing. And to think, I would have had to pay extra to get the photo releases with someone else. Talk about my lucky day!

10/4/10 @ 8:03 pm (reply)

10.

Member

emma5w (message) 547 posts, Busy bee

I made our guestbook with Shutterfly and loved it. So easy-peasy!

10/4/10 @ 8:53 pm (reply)

11.

Member

Florin (message) 70 posts, Worker bee

I decided to go with Picaboo because I found a $25 Groupon that gives me a $100 credit. I actually purchased two of them so I’m using one for our guest book and the other for the album. Our photographer offers some gorgeous options, but none that are in our budget range.

10/4/10 @ 9:22 pm (reply)

12.

Member

marieta (message) 339 posts, Helper bee

I just put together a wedding album for one of my friends… I’m not doing that for my own. It was a pain and I also like the idea of photos printed ON the pages. I’ll probably do something similar to what you did. Maybe Adorama. I haven’t looked at them yet.

Good job! Sorry about all those reprints, but glad things worked out. Good customer service can really make a company.

10/4/10 @ 9:55 pm (reply)

13.

Guest

Katie

Great job! Thanks for the inspiration… i’ve been procastinating on making an album forever - time to do it! Thanks for the kick in the pants I needed.

10/4/10 @ 10:55 pm (reply)

14.

Member

photographernico (message) 527 posts, Busy bee

DIY album all the way! I’ve done them before and have been pleased with the results, especially for the price vs professional albums.

Only thing left to decide is which online album service to use.

10/5/10 @ 12:19 am (reply)

15.

Bee

Miss Brooch (message) 1,721 posts, Bumble bee

I’m so glad you shared about this, bc we’re not thrilled with the idea of spending $1k on an album either. After the wedding, who knows what money, if any we’ll have left! I’ve always had Shutterfly in my mind as a backup, so I’m glad to hear their customer service, quality, etc. is so good!

10/5/10 @ 12:29 am (reply)

16.

Member

Farfromachildbride (message) 1,006 posts, Bumble bee

I, too, used Shutterfly for our family albums. Everyone that receives one, loves it! I am getting a larger, more expensive album from our photographer but Snapfish is very nice for what it is. And I did not have near the issues with them you did, thankfully!

10/5/10 @ 8:12 am (reply)

17.

Guest

Katie H,

Sweet! Glad to see a good review for snapfish books! I bought my gown at David’s Bridal and got a 20 dollar credit there. I’m thinking I’ll use it towards making an album of e-pics just to see how it is.

10/5/10 @ 8:20 am (reply)

18.

Member

MAGnifiqueMedia (message) 17 posts, Newbee

We didn’t end up going with a professional album; our photographer didn’t even offer the option. We ended up printing all the pictures and putting them in nice photo albums, which works just as great. For her wedding gift to me, my matron of honor made us a Shutterfly book of the entire period of my engagement — from the day we got engaged through showers, parties, bachelorette and a few wedding pics. It was wonderful and is now displayed in our living room! Almost all of our visitors pick it up and look through it when visiting.

10/5/10 @ 12:19 pm (reply)

19.

Member

mebless (message) 512 posts, Busy bee

I have used shutterfly before to make small albums and this works just fine and dandy for me!! I love the glossy finished look of the albums that are made (If I have to make an album you bet it will not look that amazing).

10/5/10 @ 2:12 pm (reply)

20.