Your wedding day is only a brief moment in time (it all goes by so fast!), but your wedding photos will last forever. Your treasured first dance as a married couple, the tears in Grandma’s eyes as you walked down the aisle, the silly dance moves by your little nephews – these beautiful moments are what your wedding day is all about. To make the most of your memories, I highly recommend having them printed.
Digital photos have their place and are fantastic for sharing online, posting on social media, and sending to friends, but they can never replace the tangible reality of actual wedding photos. Here’s why you should print your wedding photos, and why it’s one of the best investments you can make to preserve your memories.
Share your wedding story with your children
If you’re planning to have children, sharing your wedding photos with them is one beautiful reason to have them printed. It meant the world to me to be able to sit down with my daughter and our wedding album and use the images to tell her the story of my wedding day.
She loved hearing the story and looking at the photos, but I also love that she can pick up her parents’ wedding album anytime she likes, flipping through the pages and seeing our love and happiness on our wedding day.
In the future, I hope our album becomes a special family heirloom for her – one day, it might take a place on the shelf next to her own wedding album.
Protect memories from becoming lost in a digital world
Wondering why it’s important to print your wedding photos? One of the biggest reasons is that it safeguards your photos against loss. It’s so easy for digital files to disappear instantly due to computer crashes, lost USB drives, or server errors.
It would be heartbreaking to wake up one day and find that your wedding images had vanished without a trace. By printing some of your favorite wedding day photos, you’ll be able to keep them forever without the worry of them becoming lost in the digital ether.
(Tip: to keep your digital wedding photos safe, always back them up with a saved copy placed onto an external hard drive.)
Gift a wedding album to a cherished relative
For elderly relatives or loved ones, accessing social media or email to browse through wedding photos isn’t always easy. This is why printed wedding photos can make a beautiful gift for a relative who would prefer physical photos over digital files.
You can create a bespoke album for them, with all of the wedding day photos you know they’ll love the most – imagine the sweet smile on their face each time they pick up your wedding album and browse through the pages.
Framed wedding photos can also make for a lovely thank-you gift to anyone who went above and beyond to make your wedding day special.
Relive your wedding moments through physical touch
A wedding can feel like an emotional rollercoaster – from pre-ceremony jitters, to elation, to disbelief that it’s over, you’re likely to feel, see, and think so much on your wedding day that it’s easy to become overwhelmed.
But by creating a physical wedding album, you can slow down and step back into your wedding day, anytime you like. Your wedding photographer is there to capture all of the moments of the day that you might have missed, and it can be so comforting to curl up on the couch with your wedding album, reminiscing about how you felt on the day and reliving the beauty of all the moments you experienced.
You just can’t get this feeling from digital photos. With its glossy paper, weighted pages, and the your names embossed on the cover, a printed wedding album transports you back in time to your wedding in a tangible way.
Framed wedding photos help you personalize your home
Many couples ask me, “What do I do with my wedding photos?!” After you’ve received them from your photographer, you might be unsure about how to display them. There’s no right or wrong answer, but I love using a few of my wedding photos to decorate my home.
A framed photo on the fireplace mantle or a few images placed along a hallway can add personality and love to your home. Plus, you’ll be reminded of your wedding moments each time you walk past your photos. Consider selecting three or four of your top wedding and engagement photos and using them as part of your interior design.
Do wedding photographers provide prints? Yes, most photographers can arrange printing for you at an additional cost. That way, you’ll only need to pay for the images you want to have printed.
Enjoy your wedding photography as it was intended
Printing your photos also allows you to enjoy them in their best possible light. As a wedding photographer, I create images with a very high resolution and quality, so the end result is crisp, clear, vibrant, and authentic.
However, when photos are compressed digitally, this can slightly distort the image from the way the camera intended it to look. Of course, the digital photos will still look amazing, but by printing your photos, you’re getting the closest possible version to the real moment in time when it was captured.
What wedding photos should I print?
With hundreds of wedding photos, selecting the images you want to frame or include in your wedding album isn’t always an easy task. The choice is yours, but I can recommend selecting the images that resonate with you the most – those stunning captures that seem to jump off the screen or page, evoking love, happiness, laughter, or nostalgia.
I offer wedding album design and am very glad to work with you to go through your images and create a cohesive, stylish wedding book that tells the story of your day. From taking the photos on the day to delivering your custom wedding album, complete with tailored fonts, paper, and colors, it brings me so much joy to help my couples maximize the usage of their wedding photos.
With a background in art direction, I believe every photo tells a story, and the placement of pictures throughout an album will help you and your loved ones relive your wedding memories for decades to come.