Wedding Albums

[preston_harper]

I have a couple who wants an album that will be below $250, but want someone to create it for them. I do not have

the time or skill to do such a thing. I suggested basic companies like blurb and mpix, but they want something just

a little better. Can anyone suggest a company that will do a basic design and print/bind for about $250?

 

Thank you

[david_schilling___chicago_]

Any albums that I could suggest would start at about that price, at cost, without design & prints. You can go with the inexpensive consumer stuff like shutterfly and mypublisher but if you want nicer it comes at a higher price.

[wedding-photography-denver]

As David says, 250 is about the lowest cost I have.

 

If I design a basic book, or even find a designer to do if for me, the cost starts at about double that number.

 

Sorry I cannot be more help here.

[ray_tribendis]

Preston:

Keeping in mind that you don't have the time or skill to do such a thing, ponder this...

I'm not a Professional. I did a wedding for my neice. Her Mom put together a basic album on Shutterfly for $100.

Took her about an hour and a half. She also said she did not have the skill to do such a thing.

Is it worth your time to take say...2 hours & charge them $250?

I agree with others that after looking in to albums, I know of no companies that offer both design and print for $250.

Good luck Preston

Ray

[preston_harper]

That is what I thought. The couple unfortunately wants a product their wallet cannot afford at this time. My recommendation will be to go with a company like mypublisher or shutterfly, and when the right time arrives, put the extra money out for a quality product. Thank you all for your responses.

[twatkinson]

You could try mpix. They have a suede cover option that you can add foil stamping to and a custom photo cover option. As

far as design goes, I'm pretty sure they have template pages so you can just drag and drop the pics. The total cost for you

should be around $175 I think.

[mrmel]

If your lab uses the ROES system a pretty good looking proof album can be created with very little effort on your part. They usually charge the same price per page and offer 6/9/12/16 images per page. It's not a traditional wedding album but it will give them the opportunity to put a great album together sometime in the future when cost may not be an issue.

[steve_c.5]

Preston, the only way your couple could get something in that price range would be something like MyPublisher.com. These are inexpensive template-based hardcover books. I generally charge my clients $300-400 to design one for them. I don't do many that way. But, it's not going to be what they're probably expecting, and I think they need to understand that really nice albums cost a lot.

 

Of course, they could order prints for the album and make one themselves with traditional scrapbooking materials. Not very modern, though.

 

I prefer Graphi-Studio or similar high-end books, which I price starting at $800. This would be for a 20 page album, plus my design time. The price goes up depending on number of additional pages and the size of the book. Alternately, Graphi-Studio offers a design service for a nominal price. For usually less than $150, they'll do the design for you, just upload the images and they'll do the rest.

[karina_a]

Hi Preston,

 

Don't know if this is any help to you as this company is based in Melbourne Australia, but I am sure they post -

you would just have to make sure the postage didn't take the price out of the price-range.

 

The Edge is one of the main pro labs in Melbourne: http://www.theedgephoto.com.au

 

They specialise in weddings, and are used by most of the Pro's in Melbourne (Xcite / Jerry Ghionis, David Fowler,

Mercury Megaloudis and many

others). I use them and find them to have extremely high quality, I was therefore pleasantly surprised when I was

in there the other day to notice that they have started doing photo books which are good quality and really

reasonably priced (I am sure that if they choose the right number of pages it will fit inside their budget -

esp as the Australian dollar is so low at the moment). Most pro's use them for proof books and get their full

albums made through other companies

using prints from The Edge (eg Albums Australia), but they can be designed to look like a coffee table album as

well (with design elements rather than just proof layout).

 

They are about to (and may already have) released free software for customers to design the albums. Nothing is

on their website yet, but I am sure if you emailed them they would send you details and a price-list. They are

very good to deal with - professional and helpful.

 

Of course at that price I would be getting your clients to do the work themselves, as that is a very small amount

for an album - esp if they are looking for quality, and I would be very surprised if they could find anyone to

design it for that price - I wonder if they appreciate the work involved? Hopefully they are just unable to

afford anything more expensive, and aren't undervaluing the work involved, or trying to short-change you.

 

Anyway - if they are willing to do the work themselves (The Edge told me the software would be easy to use) then

this is one option for them - although I am unsure whether they deal with the general public so you may need to

check that. Good luck.

[sam_ellis]

How about a self-adhesive album like the Renaissance Ventura? I think you could get away with the album and prints (if you go for a low-cost lab) for near what they are willing/able to pay. There's others, but I forget what companies sell them. They key factor there is the design time. If you're willing to release the images on disc, they may be able to hire a high school desktop publishing class (yearbook students). I teach graphic design and I've thought about doing album designs with my classes as a project (not for clients, just for the experience).

 

 

Sam

[epes]

in romania we have some digital albums producer who will bind the album with 15 folios (30 pages) for about 30$.

any extra folio will be around 3 more$. the print for a 20x30 cm folio (so a double side one) will be around 4$.

so with little math we have:

 

binding - 30

 

15 folios (30 pages) - 60

 

total for the album - 90.

 

plus design, I would design for a client for about 50$ for those 30 pages.

 

so around 140$. 200 tops. (if it`s leather and other extra stuff)

 

now remember, this is romania, the prices are quite low compared to US!

[austin wedding photography]

I would look at Molly West or similar cloth/paper albums. They are about $100 or so and very quality.

Get photo corners and 5x7's and paste them in one to a page.

They can only pay for what they can afford.