Your Wedding Album: The Most Important Thing I Create
It's hard to put into words how strongly I feel about creating a wedding album. It is quite literally the most important thing I could make for our couples. I believe it in the depth of my being. In a jump up and down on a soapbox, shout it from the rooftops kind of way. Creating a gorgeous, built-to-last, professional album is one of the strongest ways to take a stand and say: “This happened and it matters. We matter. Our story, our families’ stories and our legacy matter.”
I think your wedding album is more important than the actual photos.
Clearly that’s a bit of a catch-22 since you can’t have the album without the photos. What I mean is this: The photos that mean the most to me did not win any awards. They didn’t push the boundaries of the camera’s abilities or showcase what an amazing artist the photographer was. My favorite photos - the ones, if necessary, I would grab off the shelf as I ran out of a burning house - by photography standards, are considered simple snapshots. They are of my grandpa laughing while he dances with my grandma at my cousin’s wedding. They are Kevin and I walking down a sidewalk in the West Loop on an average October Sunday morning. Both of these were taken by professional photographers but they won’t win over any fancy judges at a photography competition (and by no offense to those skilled photographers!). What these photos do is far more important than any trophy.
Even just in writing about them, these photos stir up strong feelings, let alone when I see them. These photos remind me of a family history that helped get me to where I am today. These photos showcase the giddiness of a new relationship (a particularly helpful memory jog on the days when the dishes are toppling over in the sink and there are 3 loads of laundry to be done ;-) ).
And you know why those 2 are some of the first that pop into my head? Because I see them every single day. They are printed and they hang in our hallway. They sit on my desk and hang above our bed.
A wedding day is packed full of these perfect kind of moments. This can make picking just one or two prints to frame daunting. Enter albums. What makes an album ideal to capture the day forever is it's ability to literally be a story book. It allows you to again feel the progression of emotions as you remember. Your perfect Heirloom Album can also grant someone who wasn't there insight into what it actually felt like. Each turn of the page takes you through reliving the day - from anxious excitement in the morning into overwhelmed joy at seeing each other. Onto happy tears with Dad on the dance floor right before ridiculous laughter with friends all night long.
Digital media is fantastic for immediately sharing with your Facebook world (that’s why we hook you up with Sneak Peeks within 48 hours of the wedding day!), but digital media won’t be around to sit with your great niece on a couch as you tell the story of your proposal. An album though? An album you can feel and touch and hold the weight of it in your lap. We know this to be true because we’ve been looking at printed photos for almost two centuries. When’s the last time your phone crashed and you lost all of those great snapshots?
I believe photos are created to be printed. They look innately different (read: better) when you hold them in your hands and relish in the details only visible on gorgeous paper. A glaring computer screen can’t remind you of the texture of your husband’s custom suit jacket as you hugged him for the first time on your wedding day.
Last week I talked about the people that made me into the photographer I am today. I spoke about how I got to know their personalities through photos. This is the solution to ensuring the same legacy for your story. Together, we are making your favorite photos but we are also making the favorite photos of people yet to come.