Album Switch

Sunday was not only Mother's Day, it was also our 6 month anniversary. Six months ago, on a Sunday no less, we officially tied the knot. So I thought what better way to celebrate it than by updating our wedding photo album.

But, wait. We've only been married for 6 months. How can it already be time to update our wedding album? Especially considering we just got it in the mail in February? Well, let me show you the album we had.

Pretty plain jane. Nothing to write home about. But this is the album that was included in our photography package, along with 300 prints of our favorite photos. We received the album in the mail at the same time we received our digital prints.

One of the things that I wasn't a fan of was the fact that our portrait photos were all turned sideways to fit into the album. That, and there was a little problem during the shipping process...

Do you see it? The prongs on the inside of the album weren't aligning. So whenever we'd flip through the album the pages would get snagged really easily. More than a little frustrating, if you ask me. So, we kept our eyes peeled for a new wedding album. Requirements: needed to hold a minimum of 300 photos, preferably have slots for both landscape and portrait prints, and absolutely no space for writing - I hate those albums where you write little memories. I wanted my wedding photos to speak for themselves.

Then, the perfect album appeared....

We found this baby at JoAnn Fabrics. It's a cloth bound album that houses at least 400 photos. But my favorite part? The fact that it's a teal/turquoise color, which was one of our wedding colors (the lighting really doesn't do it justice in the picture above). The $20 sale price was enough for us to bring it home.

So, I set myself up at the dining room table. I even had a little help.

First task was to take all of the photos out of the original album. Then I had to figure out which picture was going to be featured in the little window on the front cover. I went with one of our favorites. We love the picture so much we even featured it in our dining room gallery wall.

Then it was time to organize all of the photos into a somewhat chronological order. The hardest part was trying to find enough landscape and portrait pictures to fill up each page.

Like I said, I had a hard time filling all the slots. But, considering we had only 300 photos and there was at least 400 slots, there was bound to be some empty space. At first I thought about adding in our prediction cards that our guests filled out during our reception, but they seem to be currently hiding... But I like the idea of eventually adding them once I find them. That, and maybe adding some small pieces of card stock in our wedding colors with memories from that day.

Another thought I had was to maybe start filling the empty space in the album with photos from our upcoming anniversaries; maybe even some card stock memories from those occasions too. But we'll see. I've got another 6 months before I need to worry about that.

So there you have it, our little wedding album switcheroo. I couldn't be happier with the switch - its so much easier to flip through our pictures from that day now. And the teal color makes me smile every time I see it.