Photobook arrives – it’s like Christmas in July

The Book & Cover

Some Of My Favorite Pages

Pricing:

I’m a pretty budget savvy person so one of the first things that caught my attention was the price.  Lulu.com Photobooks start at $9.99 for a soft cover, 20 page book and $19.99 for a hard cover, 20 page book.  Very budget friendly!

Sizes and Templates:

I really like the range of options that Lulu offers for their ebooks. My particular book is an 8 1/2 x 8 1/2 square book. I am a huge fan of square albums (its the scrapbooker in me lol) and its generally a more expensive option when it is offered which isn’t often.  I really like that this size/shape was available for the same price.  Other sizes included 8 1/2 x 11, 9 x 7, 5.25 x 3.5 (guest book album?) and 3.75 x 2.5 (brag books for grandmas?).

Lulu.com also offers a great selection of templates that you can use depending on your preferred style: classic, modern, romantic, vintage, nature inspired, etc.   Now – I am a graphic designer and I had already designed the pages for my album so I choose full photo templates for each page and then uploaded my own designs as a photo for each page and for the cover. I love that flexibility – you can use one of their templates if you wish – or if you have some graphic design or digital scrapbook ability you can design your own pages like I did. Just make sure you respect the bleed areas.

Building a Photobook:

I found the Photobook creator very easy to use. You can upload pictures from your computer or from your albums on Flickr, Facebook, etc.  You then choose the layout you want to each page (one picture, two pictures, three pictures, text boxes, etc) and drag and drop your photos into their spaces.  You can save your progress and come back to it late if you need to until you are ready to publish.

Show off and/or sell your Photobook!

The neat thing about Lulu is that it’s both a self publishing company AND a bookstore. You can create your books there and sell them through the website. You set the prices you want to charge and when a book is purchased, Lulu prints and ships directly to the customer. This feature is great for photographers who want to offer their brides affordable, flexible album options. You create the album and set your price. The bride and her family can order as many copies as they wish whenever they wish.

There are a few different options you can pick when you publish. You can choose to keep the album private (so only you can order it). You can also choose to have your book available by link only. This means you can give the link to friends and family so they can preview and purchase a copy if they want. I choose this option – not because I want family to buy my book – but because then family and you guys can go see the preview (Click here to check it out lol). This option keeps your book from being included in their public database – which is the third option if you have a book you want made available to purchase for the general public.

Quality

I am quite happy with my photobook. I choose a hardcover book and it is quite sturdy. It’s only 20 pages thick so it kind of reminds me of a child’s hardcover picture book lol – nice and sturdy.  (Yes, you can add more pages as well).  I was impressed by the color quality as well – the pages were crisp and clear and the colors were bright. My photos came out looking gorgeous on each page.

GIVEAWAY – GET YOUR OWN PHOTOBOOK!!!!

So – we’re going to give away a photobook to one lucky reader! You can use it to create a wedding album or an album showcasing your wedding planning process (showers, parties, etc), your honeymoon, or whatever you wish. You will be able to choose your size, hard cover or soft cover and up to 20 pages at no cost. Giveaway Ends August 4th at midnight EST.

Here’s how to enter:

Sign up for our newsletter in the sidebar – all newsletter subscribers will automatically be entered to win!

You can also earn additional entries by Twittering our giveaway. Send your tweet @CrystalUnrau to ensure that your extra entries get counted!

If you’re thinking about doing your own hair – my advice is this:

- Pick a style that you can handle, that makes sense for your hair

- Practice! I actually wore my hair in a similar style for a few events earlier that year just so I could be sure that I could make it look like I wanted and that it would stay all day long.

Martha Stewart has a feature in her Summer 2010 issue showcasing these DIY styles with photo instructions that might be inspirational as well.

When we planned our vow renewal for our 10th anniversary, I wanted to have something done in honor of him. We set up a table at the reception with a basket for people to leave cards. I displayed a “Live, Laugh, Love” candle holder that I had at home with a mounted scrapbook page I had made in his honor a few years back. I also included a photo of him from our wedding in a little silver frame. The flowers are actually  my bouquet which I placed on the table once I arrived at the reception.

Are you doing anything at your wedding in memory of a loved one?

Photo copyright: Punam Bean Photography

Brandy will do some wicked amazing editing on the images we chose. The first one is my favorite and the second one is J’s favorite. Unfortunately neither one of us were thrilled with the other’s choice in favorites… but since J has already mastered the art of compromise. We got MY favorite in a wall portrait and HIS favorite in a 5×7! haha! We’ll probably go back and order his favorite in a wall portrait too, when funds aren’t so tight… because, hel-lo weddings are expensive!!

Without further ado, our engagement pics (All from Brandy at Something Beautiful)

One of my BM’s called David’s Bridal several weeks ago and said “what is the very last day that I can order this dress to have it in time for a wedding at the end of May”.

DB said “April 15th”. So, she called on April 14th and said “I want to order this dress” and they said “sorry Charlie that dress no longer exists anywhere in the universe.”

ANYWHERE. IN. THE. UNIVERSE.

Are you kidding me? They could order one but it would take FIFTEEN WEEKS to get in. FIFTEEN WEEKS!!!! HELLO, we need it in like FOUR! (or less)

So now what? I can’t have ONE girl in a completely different dress. I can’t have lopsided bridal party. (I mean, maybe one of the groomsman could walk down our junior bm… she is pretty tall… but doncha think that’d look plain silly??!!! I do. I mean come on; J should be allowed to be the only cradle robber in the wedding party! Haha!)

Well, after calling every DB in the country, telling them that this is clearly their fault. And that clearly THEY are responsible for fixing it. We decided that the only thing to do is for said BM to get a new dress in cornflower blue. DB said that we could swap out one of the other BM dresses, so we will exchange J’s daughter’s dress for whatever my other BM chooses. So we’ll have 2 in one dress and 2 in another and pray it looks intentional.

SIGH.

I’m sure what I like about both artists is their impeccable photo editing. I mean, photography is a whole different ballgame than it was 10 years ago. I believe that if you learn to edit really well, that is what sets you apart from other wedding photographers. I adore that new “glowy” feel. It’s almost magical!

SOURCE **WARNING** You’ll spend a whole day going through this man’s site!!!

Check out Becker’s before and after shots. Genius!! He takes photos from good to AH-MAZING! See…

SOURCE

Jessica Claire shoots a lot of romantic Mid-Summer Nights Dreamish photos, of weddings with a lot more uniqueness and style than my “I know damask is overdone” wedding. I wouldn’t pick that level of vintagey goodness for my own nuptials, but there’s something about her images that I’m absolutely drawn to! It’s vintage done in a modern way that I love.

SOURCE **Hope you have another whole day to spend on her site!

When I first started planning my wedding, I knew I wanted “classic and timeless”, I know I am having elements of 2010 (such as the forementioned overdone damask), but my hope is that when my kids look at my wedding album, they find little to laugh at! Not that I would EVER laugh at the blue veils my mom made her bridesmaids wear…

to this … 

In the time we’ve been dating. (I also got the gap in my teeth closed a couple years ago in anticipation of our wedding day. I’m serious. This was a good year and a half pre-engagement!… I’m only admitting all of this because I will be getting married in SIX weeks! hehe!)

Now its practically time for the wedding. I had my hair trial this weekend. I worried that my hair was TOO long. That it would compete with the beautiful V at the back of my gown. J would adamantly disagree and my mom would give her left leg for me to cut my hair into a shoulder length bob as I wore it for 24 of my 28 years.  I contemplated getting a PRE-wedding chop, but decided on a mere trim instead.  I’m so glad I did. At my trial  my hair held the curl better than it had EVER done before!

I spent hours scouring the internet for the perfect wedding do and for the perfect wedding stylist. Since I live in Birmingham (and am madly in love with my stylist here… and even thought about flying him to St. Louis for the wedding), I’ve had to take a leap of faith in the hair department. I noticed on Facebook that an old high school friend got married. I LOVED her hair, so I emailed her and asked her where she got her hair done. She told me, I scheduled an appointment and I spent TWO hours getting it recreated on my head!

(note to self, freshen up your makeup before you take a picture of yourself that the whole world could see!)

Here’s the verdict. I LOVE the curl. She curled it with a Chi Straightening Iron, like you would curl a ribbon with scizzors! It was amazing to watch! The curl stayed in all night. And it wasn’t crispy crunchy curl, but rather soft lucious curl! I wasn’t in love with the front. I felt a little cone-headed, with the sides of my hair plastered to my head (before I pulled a few strands loose) and the top as tall as a Southern beauty queen.

The next day I did a little bump in front. I tried on my veil. I got tingly! I found my REAL bridal hair style! Unfortunately it would mean not wearing the tiara that my dear friend was letting me use as my “something borrowed”. And I thought for sure my mom would refuse to have a daughter who was a tiara-less bride. So I sat at the table with my mom, with my tingle inducing hair, she looked at me and said “you should wear your hair like that for the wedding”. So there you have it. The story of how my wedding hair developed. Here’s what I’m going for…

I’m sorry, I have no clue where I got this picture, I’ve had it saved to my computer since my hair was short and my teeth were gapped! hehe! I guess I’ve wanted this style forever!!!

SOURCE

First. Printing. We decided to have the invites printed by a professional. We couldn’t afford engraving (seriously, who can? It’s a fortune!!!), but we were able to use thermography (raised letter printing). The invites turned out beautifully. BUT, I designed a fancy schmancy little monogram to go at the top of the RSVP cards. I LOVED it. But when I saw it in person I was horrified. I’d forgotten that there was a scrolly design already printed on the RSVP paper. It looks uber busy. Of course, Mom, Dad, J and a dear BM all told me it looked fine and I was overreacting (who moi??!), but I’m still disappointed in the way they turned out. My only consolation, they’re RSVP cards, so they’ll get sent back to my folks!

Secondly. Direction Cards. We needed direction cards. Our ceremony and reception are in two different locations, so I didn’t really know how I wanted to approach this. I went to wedding mapper and tried my hand at my own maps inspired by wedding bee (if I would have stuck with these, I’m sure my guests would have ended up in East Zimbabwe for the wedding, and Alaska for the reception), nothing looked right. I finally decided to ditch the map idea all together and just print out the directions. Happily, I went about double sided printing both sets of directions on the perforated direction cards that came with our invitation set. Uh. Oops. You CAN’T double side print on perforated cards. I had no idea. So, back to square one. I ditched the perforated cards and bought 4×6 card stock at Hobby Lobby. I double sided printed those, 2 per card, and then had them cut at Office Max for under a dollar and it took maybe one minute! Seriously, if you need a big set of anything cut, take them to Office Max pronto!

Thirdly. Typing. I don’t know how to merge one document into another, so I spent an entire evening typing my guest list’s addresses into Avery label templates. And that was just MY guest list. Dad spent an entire evening typing his list too. My eyes grew crossed and my head started to spin. My heartfelt apologies if your label has some poor misconfiguration of your name on it!

Fourthly. Stuffing. I spent a whole other evening stuffing direction cards and RSVP cards into 150 invites.

Fifthly. The bows. I told my mom that the bows that came with the set weren’t critical. We could just leave them off. It’d save us a lot of work and they wouldn’t be missed. Mom liked the bows. So, I started tying them on the invitations. Mom said something along the lines of “can’t you get them to look normal”, I couldn’t. But she could, hers looked like perfect little Martha Stewart bows, so she took over the bow tying task. 9 days, and a finger blister later, she has 150 perfectly tied bows. (actually, some people might not have gotten bows…. maybe it was more like 30 perfectly tied bows… but they are PERFECT.)

My Attempt:

Mom (Momtha Stewart)’s Perfection:

Sixthly (I’m making up words). The label putting on. Our invites are black. So we needed labels, as I mentioned thirdly, we printed them on Avery templates. Avery templates are wonderful. But they don’t actually put the labels on for you. You have to do that yourself. ;-p hehe! Well, Mom had to do that herself. I was back in Birmingham by that time. Another. Day’s. Work. (PS. Thanks for all your hard work, Mom!)

Seventhly. Work invites. All the aforementioned hard work doesn’t count the invites we’re giving friends from work (J and I work together). We decided to do those separately, since we only had 150 fancy invites. We got 2 sets of black and white damask(ish) invites from Gartners. I took a bunch of the extra sillyly printed RSVP cards with me to stuff in the work invites. Oops, they are done in raised lettering. I can’t send out raised letter RSVP cards and flat invites. So, I sent off the work invites to a printer in Birmingham (didn’t get nearly the good deal we got in St. Louis!) for them to be done in thermography as well. Still waiting on those. And then the long, tedious task starts all over! Thank goodness there aren’t any bows on those!

SOURCE

The moral of this story. It might cost a teensy bit more. But don’t DIY your invites. Seriously, who needs the headache… or the blisters.

Now to be fair – I LOVE pink. I LOVE vintage. And I LOVE flowers. And this wedding has a lot of all three.

Check it out on Style Me Pretty!