The best wedding photo albums are the ultimate wedding keepsakes
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You spent months planning the perfect wedding. The actual day tends to fly by in a blur, and you'll be glad to have photos to remember it by. Whether you want something elaborate or simple, it's important to choose one of the best photo book makers to create a tangible memory of your big day.
Two terms you see frequently in regards to wedding albums are lay-flat and flush mount. Lay-flat is just what it sounds like: the pages lay flat when the album is open. Flush mount means that the photo printing goes all the way to the edges of the page and the page is rigid cardboard rather than paper. All of Printique's photo books have lay-flat pages, which is unusual at a lower price point.
Best Overall: Printique
I'm a big fan of Printique (formerly known as AdoramaPix) and even their cheapest photo books are of phenomenal quality with thick lay-flat pages. Printique offers both photo books and premium photo albums. Choose from over a dozen wedding themes and add your own stickers and other flourishes. Make a little 6-by-6 book for a parent or grandparent, all the way up to 12-by-12 or even 12-by-15 for an heirloom-quality statement album. Choose from eight different papers and several cover options such as leather, vegan leather, or metal. You get a lot of options with Printique, and all of them are wonderful.
Pros:
- Wide variety of choices, both photo books, and photo albums
- Reasonable prices
- Even the cheapest photo book has thick, lay-flat pages
Cons:
- Higher-end albums get expensive
Best Overall
Printique
Can't go wrong
You can't miss with any of Printique's classy options.
Nice Options: PikPerfect
PikPerfect offers both wedding books and wedding albums. Wedding books start at $40 and can showcase up to 244 pages and 1000 photos. Wedding albums are constructed from more upscale materials and thicker pages. Lay-flat albums start at $75 and can have up to 120 pages and 350 photos. Flush mount albums start at $199 and can have up to 76 and 275 photos. PikPerfect has a design service where you can review the draft and make unlimited revisions before your album is created.
Pros:
- Variety of options and price points
- Choose lay-flat or book style
- Design service available
Cons:
- Not as luxe as some
Nice Options
PikPerfect
Nicely priced
Choose from a variety of options in terms of price and fanciness.
Best Value Album: Nations Photo Lab
Their lay-flat, flush-mounted wedding album on thick paper, "Album99," starts at $99. There are many options for different covers such as genuine Italian leather, canvas, photo, and other customizations. The smallest albums are 8-by-8-inches and the largest are 12-by-12 inches. You can get anywhere from 10 to 50 pages, depending on page thickness. This is a good lower-priced option if you want a quality lay-flat, flush mount album but don't need a lot of frills.
Pros:
- Lay-flat and flush-mount albums for less
- Many beautiful cover options
- Imprinting available
Cons:
- No design service available
Best Value Album
Nations Photo Lab
Elegant
A lay-flat, flush-mounted album feels fancier, even before you take other features into account.
Weddings Only: Altar Albums
Altar Albums, formerly known as BrideBox, offers three different hand-crafted wedding album styles for different budgets. The only thing Altar Albums makes is wedding albums. Their lowest priced album, known as Lake, is a hard photo cover book with lay-flat paper pages five times thicker than regular paper. It's considered in between a regular photo book and an heirloom quality album. Their middle-priced album, Anza, has a faux leather cover option and lay-flat, flush mount pages that are 10 times thicker than regular paper. Marina, their deluxe option, adds more cover options such as metal or full-grain leather. Albums range from 8-by-8 to 12-by-12.
Pros:
- Three tiers for different needs
- Nicely priced lay-flat option
- Nice upscale features for higher tier
- Entire website is wedding album focused
Cons:
- Not as many options as some websites offer
Weddings Only
Altar Albums
Wedding specialist
You'll find no other photo books on Altar Albums' site, only wedding albums.
Best Variety: Shutterfly
I've ordered many photo books from Shutterfly over the years. I like the decorative frames and stickers you can add to your photos with this service. They offer three different wedding styles. The least expensive is their Standard Hardcover book, which is just a regular photo book but with a wedding theme. It won't be lay-flat, nor flush-mounted, and it will be regular thin paper, but it's quite an inexpensive way to make a lovely book of your wedding photos. The Premium Photo Book adds a leather cover option and lay-flat pages. Finally, the Professional Flush Mount Album has lay-flat, thick, flush mount pages up to 12-by-12 or 11-by-14 in size. You also get an eco-leather cover, storage box, and design services included.
Pros:
- So many choices from basic photo books to lay-flat flush mount albums
- Design services available
- Customize with theme and color
- Add your own flourishes if you like
Cons:
- Not as luxe as some
Best Variety
Shutterfly
Choices galore
From a basic photo book to a professional flush mount album, Shutterfly's got you covered.
Best Themes: Mixbook
Mixbook offers beautiful photo books with a wide variety of themes you can choose to match your wedding theme, such as Industrial Chic, Elopement, Rustic, Modern Beach, Outdoor Botanical, Glittered, LGBT, and more. Note that these are photo books, not lay-flat flush mount heirloom albums. Still, if you're not interested in traditional albums or you want a second album or several to give to parents or grandparents, this is a beautiful and economical choice.
Pros:
- Many beautiful themes
- Nicely priced
- Plenty of options for size and shape
Cons:
- Not really albums, but rather just photo books
Best Themes
Mixbook
Book style
Get a beautiful, custom photo book (but not an album) at Mixbook.
Best on Mac: Motif
When our own Christine Romero-Chan got married recently, she made her wedding album with Motif. She wanted a basic photo book, nothing fancy. She says,
"Motif has a simple layout editor that makes it easy to create the pages you want for your photo book. I was able to easily pick out the photos I want, but Motif has an Autoflow feature that can automatically sort the images for you, so it's less work. Once ordered, the book arrives quickly, and the pages are good quality for the price you pay."
Motif is probably the easiest service to use for Apple fans. You can download and open Motif directly in Apple Photos on your Mac once you download the Mac App. Or, download the iOS app on your iPhone or iPad if you prefer.
Pros:
- Integrates perfectly with your Mac, iPhone, or iPad
- Easy to use
- Autoflow automatically sorts features
- Well-priced
Cons:
- You're getting a regular photo book, not an album with lay-flat or flush-mounted pages
Best on Mac
Motif
Apple integration
If you're not looking for a fancy heirloom album, this is an easy-to-use, well-priced option.
Bottom line
Wedding photo albums are precious keepsakes. My wedding was over a quarter-century ago! My bouquet has since crumbled to dust. My dress is carefully preserved in a box but so hopelessly out of fashion that neither of my daughters would ever wear it, in fact, my engaged daughter declined to even take it out of the box. But my album is still displayed proudly in my home, and I still pull it out from time to time and it makes me smile at the memories it evokes.
A custom wedding album is such a wonderful thing to have. It's really not hard to create your own; these websites walk you through the process. Some of them have their own team of designers, so all you have to do is hand over your photos and let the experts do the work. A small album for your parents or grandparents would be a delightful gift they would be sure to treasure.
All of the websites mentioned here will help you create the wedding album of your dreams; which one you choose will depend on the features you most want. Printique offers such a wide variety of high-quality and well-priced photo books and albums, you'll be sure to treasure it forever.
Credits — The person that wrote this guide
Karen S. Freeman is a teacher, writer, and family woman. She loves to travel, play with tech stuff, drink coffee, discover amazing new restaurants, and experience new things.