How to Create Your Picture-Perfect Wedding Album, Including Tips and Ideas

Now that you’ve had your wonderful wedding, it’s time to immortalize the incredible moments of your special day in print. A beautiful photo book is a wonderful way to relive those heartfelt memories for years to come – think of it as a time capsule of the highlights of your big day.

Just like your wedding, this is a project worth investing some time into, along with thoughtful consideration of all the design options. Follow the steps and tips in this guide and you’ll create a perfect wedding album photo book with ease.

Choose a wedding album theme

The wedding photo album theme you choose will help determine the style of your book as well as offering templates for its pages. Pick one that reflects your aesthetic as a couple, and that also fits with the style of your wedding. You want the template you are working with to complement the wonderful photos you’re filling it with.

Your wedding album is meant to immortalize your special day. Make sure the general aesthetic of the wedding ceremony itself is present in your wedding album through backgrounds and embellishments. For example, a wedding album commemorating a backyard wedding could include rustic and floral stickers and backgrounds to highlight the natural beauty of the outdoors.

Just a few favorite examples of wedding album themes include:

• Editorial Wedding Coffee Table Book for a sophisticated, minimalist look.
• Romantic Watercolor Wedding Coffee Table Book with a sweet floral cover illustration.
• Rustic Chic Wedding theme, perfect for photos of outdoor events in nature.
• Minimalist Deco Wedding with chic linear accents in silver and gold.
• Watercolor Wedding adorned with delicate, painterly pastel hues.

Themes are always 100% customizable, so you can mix and match design elements and add your own ideas too. Browse various different themes to take inspiration from their fun and unique layouts.

Plan the structure of your wedding album

Your wedding photo book is a proud display of the commitment you and your partner made to each other. You have one simple goal: Showcase every moment of your milestone life event that you want to remember forever.

How to do that? It’s entirely up to you, but the structure of your wedding album should make sense as a visual journey, while also reflecting your unique style as a couple. You certainly don’t want to throw a bunch of photos in chaotic random order throughout the book! Do make a general outline, but don’t be afraid to change things up as you go through the creative process.

Your structure can generally focus on either:

1. Telling the story of your distinctive relationship and wedding.
2. Making a chronological photo narrative.

Whichever structure you prefer, make sure there is a cohesive beginning, middle, and end that encompasses every memorable moment of the event. Take the time to decide what you want the direction of your album to be. You’ll be looking at it and sharing it for a lifetime, so you want to make sure it will be interesting to look at for years to come.

Make an outline

Whether you are making a storybook or photo narrative wedding album, sketch an outline that categorizes the pivotal moments you want to capture. Estimate how many pages or two-page spreads each category might need. An example of a good wedding album outline could include:

• Front cover
• Set the stage with the venue (one spread)
• Lead-up to the wedding day (one spread)
• Getting ready (two to three spreads)
• Bridal and couple portraits (five to six spreads)
• Alternate portraits with wedding details (one spread)
• Family, friends, and wedding party photos (two to three spreads)
• The ceremony (four to eight spreads)
• Cocktail hour (one to two spreads)
• Wedding reception (six to 10 spreads)
• Miscellaneous extras (two to three spreads)
• Saying farewell (one spread)
• Back cover

Pick the best photos

Going through your wedding photos and selecting the best ones is the most time-consuming, and truly special, part of any wedding album project. Don’t focus on choosing any specific number of photos. The length of the album is less important than the quality of content you are filling it with. Wonderful wedding albums can range from 50 to 1000 photos, with the average falling in the 200 to 300 range.

You might choose to filter down to a limited number of pages showcasing a select few great photos, or you may have several hundreds of great pictures from your special day. Just make sure you are not overcrowding the pages.

Essential photos for a wedding album

When narrowing down which photos to include in your wedding album, be sure to showcase all of the moments worth remembering at your wedding, such as:

• Proposal
• Venue, flowers, and decor
• Bride and groom getting ready
• Individual and couple portraits
• Family portraits
• Wedding party and friends
• First moments seeing each other
• Ceremony
• First kiss
• Cocktail hour
• Reception details
• First dance(s)
• Toasts
• Wedding band/entertainment/events
• Dancing and partying
• Throwing of the bouquet
• Cake
• Exit

The photos you choose to emphasize in your wedding album should be reflective of the special event. While selecting photos, organize them to match the categories you listed in your outline. Do this by moving photos into separate folders, or renaming the files to include the category.

Tip: Don’t agonize over the photos you didn’t get!

Many brides fret about the photos they didn’t take, but the truth is you can’t get every picture of every minute of your wedding, no matter how much you try. In time, you won’t remember (and nobody else will know about) the photos you didn’t get. You will only cherish your beautiful photo album more and more.

Select your album cover photo

Your cover photo should be that one truly perfect photo of you and your partner. Collaborate to choose a photo that captures your love story and the spirit of the day.

Get creative with the text for your names, the date, or any other title you choose for the cover of your wedding album. Experiment with different fonts, sizes, colors, and text effects, and be careful with the placement of text so that you highlight that extra-special photo without obscuring it. It’s often a good idea to stick closely to the cover design suggested by your theme.

Selecting layouts for wedding album pages and spreads

The layouts – meaning the arrangements of photos and other design elements – of your wedding album’s pages and spreads are key to giving it a professional, cohesive look. You don’t have to figure all this out from scratch. Follow the suggested layouts of your theme, use the Auto-Layout feature, and preview alternative layouts to determine which is the best fit.

Some great tips for creating the layout of your wedding photo book are:

• Include a variety of candid and scenic photos to break up blocks of portraits.
• Highlight sentimental photos, but also funny ones that put a smile on your face.
• Vary the sizes and orientation of photos, alternating between full page photo spreads and multi-photo collages.
• Make sure you don’t put faces in the page creases.
• Consider breaking up your photo spreads with text and design accents.
• Utilize white space to break up your images and give the layouts “breathing room.”
• Play with the crop and tilt of your photos for creative displays.
• Consider the flow of the pages of your album, and make sure there are meaningful transitions between key moments.

The Mixbook Studio™ will help you easily navigate the layout process while allowing you to customize the album precisely. To hone your photo book editing skills, check out these advanced tips and tricks.

Capture memories with titles and captions

Captions, titles, and other text elements aren’t essential in a wedding album, especially if you prefer a minimalist design. However, many couples love to include them because they help capture memories from the big day that might not be reflected in images alone.

Text can be a fun design element, too. Get creative with fonts and use titles and captions to break up the different photo spreads.

You can also emphasize special moments with quotes from readings or words of advice. Consider printing some beautiful wedding quotes, excerpts from your vows or speeches, and recollections of memories from the day.

Things to include beside great photos

Break up the photo stream of your amazing wedding album with some special memorabilia, like scanned copies of:

• Hand-written vows or speeches
• Wedding invitations
• Wedding certificate with inky signatures
• Reception menu
• Love letters
• Guest list
• The bride’s veil

Get an extra set of eyes

Creating a wedding album is a time intensive project that you will cherish and share with loved ones for generations. You want to make sure you get it right, and take great care to avoid errors like low-resolution photos, accidental blank pages, or typos. Pick someone you trust with an eye for details to look over your creation before you send it to the printer.

Pick top-quality photo book features

Once your wedding album is complete, you still have some important decisions to make about the cover and paper types. Both hardcover and lay flat cover types are ideal for wedding albums. Splurge on the highest-quality papers available within your budget, and consider your own preferences for matte vs glossy papers.

For more help with this decision, check out our comprehensive guide to photo book paper and cover types.

Ready to create your beautiful wedding album?

Making the perfect wedding photo album is a big project, so take your time and enjoy every step. You might want to download the Mixbook mobile app and work on the project on-the-go.

Plus, help is available 24/7! Chat with us online or email us at hello@mixbook.com.