Wedding dress, invitations wedding, wedding cake

A storybook wedding album tries to retell the story of the wedding day and highlight it’s most important moments. For that reason, the photos are placed in chronological order and titles are added to the pages, narrating what is happening or whom the page is dedicated to, e.g. “The Reveal”, “The Groom” etc. In theory, any wedding album, no matter whether “flush-mount” or any other wedding album type, can be a storybook wedding album. In general, telling a story makes a wedding album more fun to read. This article gives a guideline of what parts your story should be made off in order to be complete and comply with the standards that professional wedding album makers have created over the years.

The Wedding Invitation

Your wedding album should begin with a scan of the wedding invitation. Usually, you put a great deal of thought in the design and text of your wedding invitation. Therefore, it would be a shame not to include it in your wedding album. Furthermore, it contains other memorable information, i.e. the wedding date, the location, which makes it a great item for the first page.

The Preparations

The next couple of pages should be dedicated to the preparations of bridge and groom (usually starting with the bride). This section can be subdivided, if necessary into subsections such as “The Dress”, “The Garter”, “The Reveal”, etc.

Family, Bridesmaids and Groomsmen

Now should follow a couple of pages showing the wedding party, e.g. the happy couple with their parents, the bride with her maids, the groom with his men, the happy couple with the best people, all family members together and so on.

The Venue

Next part of the wedding album must be a couple of pages dedicated to the venue where the marriage ceremony is about to takes place. Photos could feature: the venue as a whole, the chairs for the guests, the spot where the priest will marry the couple and various bits of beautiful decoration.

The Ceremony

The ceremony is for most couples the most emotional and memorable part of their wedding. Therefore, one should put as many pages as necessary to do the moment justice. One should not miss: the entrance of bride and groom, the priest’s speech, the first kiss, the ring, the readers.

The Group Shot(s)

Now must follow one or many group shots with friends and family in various combinations. The moment directly after the ceremony produces a lot of nice pictures, because everybody is still very emotional and a lot less nervous. They need to go into your wedding album!

The Reception, the Grand Entrance

The next major part of your wedding album will be the celebration. This usually starts, much like the ceremony with at least one page dedicated to the venue. One can show the place from the outside, the entrance, the table decoration, the buffet and always very decorative: filled glasses of Champaign. This page can be combined with pictures of the happy couple (and the guests) entering the hall.

The Toasts

It follows at least on page with toasts and speeches. Obligatory is a shot of bride and groom giving their speeches. One can complement the page with additional photos from the various groups on their tables.

The First Dance

A page with the happy couple’s first dance is obligatory, maybe followed by various combinations of father and daughter, mother and son, father and daughter-in-law, mother and son-in-law, all of them ballroom dancing.

The Cake Cutting

No wedding album can do without a page dedicated to the cutting of the. This works the best, if the cake is first shown intact, followed by a shot of bride and groom doing the first cut, followed by a funny sequence of photos showing bride and groom eating the first piece.

Bouquet and Garter Toss

Also obligatory, a couple of fun shots showing the bride throwing her bouquet and the groom throwing his garters (if he was wearing any). It looks always great if there are some nice photos with the bouquet and garter in midair and the overjoyed people who caught them.

The Party

Wedding celebrations are long and a wedding album would not do them justice if they contained not at least one more page showing how much fun everybody had. These pages are perfect to put crazy and funny shots that would not fit into any other part of the wedding album.

The End

Every good wedding album finishes with one or two pages dedicated to the happy couple. If the groom carried his bride off in a fancy car, then that has to be shown now, otherwise several romantic shots of the happy couple hand-in-hand (maybe with a nice sunset in the background) also work fine.