DIY Wedding Album - Blurb Books is amazing.

ShellD13

If anyone else got copyright release from their photographers, I would highly urge you to check out www.blurb.com to create your own wedding albums.  I'd never heard of it before but I went to my FB friends to ask for recommendations for on-line photo albums and my wedding photographer commented that Blurb "blows Shutterfly out of the water".  Well when you want to make an album using your wedding pictures and your photographer chimes in with a recommendation you have to at least check it out....

I looked and fell in love.  The booksmart program that they let you download for free looked pretty intimidating at first but once you played around a bit was pretty straight forward.  Not to mention I googled promo codes before I placed my order and found one for 30% off of my first order.  I hit order and waited on pins and needles for the books to come in praying that they looked as good in person as they looked in .pdf. 

I got them today and couldn't be happier!  My photographer (who I loved) would have designed it for me but she charges $200 and I am very much of the "why should you pay for something you can do yourself" mentality.  The other great thing is that you can "publish" your book to their website which allows friends and family to buy it directly.  We had a small wedding and I was only making albums for our parents but if you are having a large wedding/lots of family I can imagine that would make it easier for some brides and grooms.

vmj23

I've been trying to decide what site to use to make an album!   I've looked at a bunch, but wasn't sure what to go with.   What size book did you?  Approx how much did it cost (for how many pages)?  Do they have templates to help you design the book?  I made our parents books on shutterfly already, but want something nicer for my own album.     

stacylynnn

Hi, did you look at MyPublisher at all?  If so, did you feel that Blurb was better than MyPublisher?

Thank you!

ShellD13

@jenni1221 - I did standard landscape 10x8. My price was based on a hardcover book with one of our wedding photos printed directly on the front cover that had 2 extra pages (standard is 20 pages) and the proline pearl paper (upgrade). I used their free booksmart program that you download onto your home computer. You pick the type of book you are making from their samples it then gives you lots of templates to pick and choose from as well the option to customize them and/or create your own templates. Once you have designed your book, you upload it to the Blurb site and place the order. I googled Blurb promo codes before I finalized my order and found one that gave me 30% off of my first order that was $200 or more. I ordered 5 books and ended up paying about $202, so they were about $40/album but they are beautiful! My parents and IL's are thrilled and it was very easy to design once you spent a bit of time playing with the Booksmart program. You could get the cost down by selecting a smaller book, going for the softcover or hardcover with a book jacket option, and or using lesser quality paper. I will say though that my wedding photographer specifically mentioned the proline pearl as making a difference in the appearance of the finished album so I didn't really consider that an upgrade for my purposes. @Knottie89780412 - I did not look at MyPublisher, before I heard about Blurb I was looking at Picboo, Shutterfly, and a couple of others I can't think of right now. I went to FB and asked my friends for their recommendations and my wedding photographer responded with "Blurb blows Shutterfly out of the water!".... Having seen albums that friends and family have done with Shutterfly and now seeing our finished album I couldn't agree more.

vmj23

great info, thanks!!