After your big day, you will look forward to seeing your wedding photos. Your wedding photographer will have taken a huge amount of photos on the day, but you won’t be able to fit every photo in your wedding album, as much as you might like to!
Your wedding album should tell the story of your wedding day, but choosing the right selection can be tricky, so we’ve put together some tips on how to choose the photos for your wedding album.
1. Avoid cluttering your album
You can’t include every photo in your album so you will need to make some cuts. Having too many pictures of the same thing or too many photos on the same page will make your album feel cluttered, so it’s a good idea to give your photos breathing room on the page and pick distinct photos from each part of the day.
You may choose to make an exception to this for certain events, such as leaving the church, where chronological photos of the two of you on the same page can provide a stop-motion effect.
2. Make it a unique blend
Your wedding album will have the best overall feel if it is a good mix of images, not just in terms of the subjects (although you will feature in most of the photos!), but also the type of shots. This will mean having a good mix of documentary images, portraits, details, locations and group shots.
The purpose of your album is to create a narrative portrait of the day that helps you to relive it, so don’t neglect pictures of the details, such as the venue, your wedding cake or the car you drove to the venue in.
3. Focus on the most important images
If you are feeling overwhelmed and don’t know where to start choosing the photos for your wedding album, then focus on the most important images first, and then build around them. You will most likely want to include your best shots of the following:
- Getting ready
- Your arrival at the venue
- The first look
- The walk down the aisle
- The vows, leaving the church or venue
- Your main posed photos with the bridal party and close family
- The speeches
- Cutting the cake
- The first dance
If you get your best images of the above and then see how much space you have left, you can start to pad out your album chronologically, by filling in the gaps between these important events.
4. Have portraits on the first and last page of the album
While it is a good idea to organise your wedding album chronologically, it can be a nice touch to bookend the album with portrait shots. This works as both an introduction and conclusion of sorts and a reminder of what the day was all about – your love and your union.
Both these portraits could be just of the two of you or, if you prefer, you could have one portrait of the two of you and the other a portrait of all the guests together.
5. Focus on the images that evoke strong emotions
If you have hired a professional wedding photographer, then all the shots you get should be of very high quality, but you should prioritise the ones that evoke the strongest feelings for you and that best capture important moments from your day and take you back there.
Your wedding album will become cluttered quickly if you try to fit everything in, so be strict and start with the best images, adding more later if you have the space.
Your wedding album should be as unique as the day itself, so there are no definitive rules for how to choose your photos or structure the album. Hopefully, these ideas have given you some inspiration or at least a starting point for creating a wonderful memento of your day!
