Is the Wedding Album Out of Date?
Why you shouldn’t have a wedding album
By Natalie Tsang
October 5, 2011
Wedding photography was invented in the mid 19th century and has changed a lot since those early inventions. In those early years, the bulky equipment and expense limited the types of poses and the number or pictures, a couple could buy. Many of the first photographs were printed on glass and kept in folding cases to protect them. Over time, wedding photography has become more and more convenient. With the invention of computers and the Internet, is the wedding album a relic of the past?
The pictures for your wedding album will take on average six hours to select, and you don’t want much more than a hundred photographs. The number of pages varies by type of album, but extra pages will cost an arm and a leg. Your photographer may also only be willing to retouch a certain number of photos without additional fees.
Unlike the wedding, the wedding album is a private keepsake for the bride and groom, and possibly for close family members like parents and grandparents. It can cost up to five thousand dollars, and you want to show it off, but you also want to preserve it.
Acid free paper and fiber print photographs are the most long lasting. If this type of album is kept in a dark, low moisture environment, it should last seventy-five to one hundred years. An album on your coffee table, which is regularly exposed to sunlight, will last a significantly shorter period.
Multiple copies of a wedding album are often less than the first copy so you can buy a few, keep one out, and the rest in storage, but that's pricy. How often are you going to look at it? With the availability of photo-hosting websites, will you be mostly looking at your photographs online or on your computer? Chances are that you'll frame your favorites, but most will languish in boxes.
Purchasing the digital files from your photographer is much more affordable. You can keep them on your hard drive, upload them to the Internet, make DVD slide shows, and order prints whenever you want. You can incorporate them into your daily life by printing your favorite pictures onto coasters or incorporate them into calendars. Some digital picture frames can give you a constant stream of wedding photography and be used to decorate your home or office. You can also print your pictures but keep them in a box or even in a bank vault.
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