5 Tips for Memorable Wedding Photo Albums

A wedding photo album has to be nothing short of perfect and unforgettable. After all, it will be the one telling the story of the wedding as it unfolds every precious moment of the special day. As a photographer, you have given your best to capture the magic of the day, now let it all shine through a printed wedding album that clients will fawn over.

A photo album is the best advertisement and PR that any wedding photographer could hope for. Make it count and you too will score a place in future client recommendations.

Here are five tips for memorable wedding photo albums.

Choose the best shots

Of course, the clients will have their favorites. However, nothing can beat a photographer’s instincts. A professional eye will choose technically perfect clicks and objective images that capture the high drama as well as intimate moments. Choose the best detail, shots that capture mood, décor, and dress-up subtleties, portrait shots of family and wedding party.

Tell the story in perfect order

Making chronological sense as the photos appear in the album is important. Tell the story with the required build-up right up to the ultimate moment. Agreed that the ‘I do’ moment is the star but so are the many events that precede it. Clients are touched as photo brings back memories of their special day.

Arrivals of faraway relatives and old friends, the rehearsal dinner, the catching up on cocktail parties, the buzz of the bridesmaids and the groom’s men, the first dance, the cake cutting, and so on. As the special day progresses through the photos, the wedding album will be a treasure chest of fond stories.

Go on a layout adventure

Design an eclectic layout and choose multiple size formats for wedding photo albums. Photographers and videographers, especially those dealing with wedding clients, always suggest that an important moment should be aptly highlighted. Think of a full page spread for the ‘walking down the aisle’ moment or call attention to the ‘vow taking’ and ‘first kiss’ moments with a double page story.

Interesting and playful layouts, different sizes, and arrangements make wedding albums visually appealing. It also makes for a memorable album that plays up important aspects, and also provides spaces for fun and exciting memories. This is a key to create a really good wedding album.

Opt for a customized cover

Personalize the wedding album to make it expressly mirror your client’s preferences. Choose a custom cover that will make your clients and their family and friends automatically reach for it. A wedding album is an emotional record, go for a cover that would speak to the couple. Think of an acrylic cover with their favorite photo, or an acrylic window at the center of the album, or a wooden plate on a leatherette cover with embossed initials, date, etc.

Score the perfect wedding album with presentation boxes

Wedding albums have a certain sacredness and should be treated as such. Presentation boxes elevate wedding albums into heirlooms that are considered priceless. Apart from protection, they also add a touch of luxury, and exclusiveness to them. From leather and transparent acrylic boxes to dedicated flash drive slots, presentation boxes take the wedding album game several notches above.

The range of presentation boxes found in the Album Design Store include elegant boxes and photo albums with lay flat binding. With professional-quality paper and printing, they are designed to be enjoyed and last for generations.

Offer the best designed wedding album

They easily speak volumes about a photographer’s dedication to his or her craft. They also make a great impression on clients who realize how practical and poetically beautiful they are. A memorable wedding album shows how you as a photographer have honored their big day. It deserves to be displayed in a keepsake that matches all the effort and emotion that went into it.

A Quick Guide to Upselling Albums to Your Wedding Clients

Photographers dealing with wedding clients can successfully maximize their profit by upselling albums. A beautifully crafted album can be a steady income stream for wedding photographers. 

The charm of an album is unmatched

An album filled with images tells many stories of the momentous wedding day. Added to it, a uniquely customized album box can make it a delightful conversation point for visiting friends, or an heirloom for generations to savor.

An album has a timeless appeal and this can be successfully used to help grow the photography business. Not sure how to approach it? 

Here’s a mini-guide to make more money from upselling albums to your wedding couples. 

Showcase a sample right at the start

Discuss about a wedding album right at the contract stage. Invest in some beautiful sample albums for your business. Let your clients hold them, feel them, and go through the pages. Sometimes experiencing albums first hand makes couples more likely to invest. Whether it’s an outright ‘yes’, or ‘no’, or a ‘maybe’ allows you to plan your next upselling strategy.

The time it right for the initial naysayers

The gap between the big day and successfully ordering an album ideally falls after 4-5 weeks. This is when wedding clients first see the full set of photos. By then most clients have chosen their favorites, those they would like to share with friends and family, and those that would be framed. They also find out by then that producing an album on their own is neither quick nor easy.

Add a card with the digital files offering help to put together their wedding album. Include a voucher inside to be used within the following two months. 

An upsell strategy is never late

For clients who excused themselves from buying an album immediately after a wedding citing budget issues, mark a workflow leading up to a couple of months before their first anniversary when circumstances may have changed. Offer a special discount towards a personalized album as a gift, make it time-limited. This could allow them to think of it as their own gift to their spouse, and also provide enough time for design and printing. 

Offer an incentive

Give your clients a reason to upgrade their package to include an album. This could be worked into a discount where a combined album and digital files order saves them money compared to when they order one at a later date. You can also include a time-limited discount offer later on as a follow-up, much like an anniversary offer.

A personalized offer is a great upselling trick

Knowing your clients not only makes the photography work better, it also allows you an insight into what ticks for the wedding couple. Tease the perfect custom-made album and couples might find it hard to refuse. After all, we are all emotional about keepsakes that are personalized to our tastes.

At the Album Design Store, wedding albums offer endless customizations through three different cover styles in acrylic, leather, and leather with acrylic windows. One can even choose from three archival-quality paper variants like matte, silk, and metallic. Moreover, truly bespoke presentation boxes or album box covers can be your USP as well to an album upsell.

Top tips to phrase your upsell ideas around

At the end of the day, the best way to upsell an album and create an extra revenue source as a photographer is to simply ask.

  • Keep things simple with several options at the same price. It organizes your upgrades and helps clients with decision-making.
  • Create a pre-design to show them what they are missing. A professionally designed album has a powerful impact.
  • Capture family group shots, not only clients but the extended family gets to buy them from you. (Think, parent albums)

Upselling can be the ticket to more money as a photographer. It may take some work but it is effort in the right place.

You may also like to read:

3 Ways to Communicate the Value of Albums to Your Clients

4 Album Design Tips That Stand the Test of Time

Even in today’s digital-first world, the tangible charm of photo albums isn’t lost. Everyone who appreciates quality and class will always be drawn by the beauty and elegant timelessness of an heirloom wedding album. No wonder, printed albums are such an essential component of your photography business. 

Mastering the art of selling printed albums to your wedding clients can help grow your income, boost your brand, and delight your clients—all in one fell swoop. But how do you create something that will be cherished by your clients—not just now, but decades down the road? 

Here are four tips to design albums that will be valued for generations. 

1. Practice restraint 

There’s one big album design trick that’s an open secret: More is less. 

As a photographer, you know only the best images must make it to the final album. But what if there are a lot of great shots that you don’t want your clients to miss? That’s when you need to bite the bullet: Handpick the best of the best and go with a clean layout with few images per spread. The rest of the images can go in the form of digital files. 

2. Make friends with the negative space

You know the importance of negative space. It’s a great way to draw the eyes to an image and highlight its most important aspects. The same goes for album design. 

The negative spaces ensure no distraction gets in the way and the viewers’ attention remains riveted to what matters the most: Your beautiful shots. 

3. Don’t let clients choose the images

Giving clients the option to pick their wedding photos for the album might sound like a good idea. But in reality, it can turn out to be a bad decision in more ways than one. Firstly, they might not be the best judge of which images will eventually make the most impressive content for the album. The photos they pick might not work well together in a layout or be strewn together as a cohesive story. 

You’re the artist and your skill lies in aligning your artistic vision with that of your clients. Your clients may offer inputs or feedback but letting them decide can often limit you from doing your best job. Plus, they might take their own time to come up with their list of favorites, which could easily delay your turnaround.    

You can save a ton of time and ensure a high-quality end result by creating the first draft with the images of your choice. Even if the clients ask for some changes, in most cases it’ll be minor tweaks rather than big design changes or worse, a complete mess that happens when too many cooks get involved in the process.

Hope you apply these tips in your next project. If you’re looking to offload some of your album design burdens, we can help you with our professional album layouts and printing services. Contact us to know more.    

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Photo Album Boxes And More Ways To Keep Precious Photos Organized