What to do with your wedding images?

You planned the most perfect day for you two to get married. You documented a part of your love story on an incredibly special day for you both. Your days dating leading up to this moment, after this you will look back on this day as your foundation. These images do not deserve to live on your phone or in a folder on your desktop somewhere. Printing your images brings them to life. Having these images printed on the walls of your home will serve as a reminder of who you are, who you two were in that era of your life and why you are here in your life together. This images living in your home should surround you with happiness, peace, love and adventure.

Downloading your Wedding Images

This isn’t back in the day when we kept film scans locked away in a controlled storage space. Digital files are filed digitally and sadly sometimes technology can fail us. These images are heirlooms of your wedding day, so let’s chat about how to protect these digital files.

The first thing you need to do is download all the images. Yes, you can favorite the ones you like the most and download those separately, but you should also download all of them. You never know when you will want to go back and see all the images you had. When you download all be sure you select high res. It’s not bad to have web-size as those are perfect for sharing on social media, but web-size images will not print in high quality. So for protecting your images, download all in high-res.

How to download all of your images.

How to store your wedding images?

You want be sure you save your images in a couple of different places after having them downloaded. This means not only on your desktop. The hard drives on our computers often fail without warning. We recommend storing your images on a cloud based system like: Google Drive, Dropbox and/or iCloud. Then as well, backing it up onto an external drive. Be sure to power up the hard drive once a year to keep it running smoothly and be mindful of updates in the world of technology. You don’t want 15 years to go by and no longer be able to see your wedding images because the ports are outdated or that particular drive is no longer supported on future software.

Sharing your wedding images

When sharing your images on social media please tag @adventureandvow. We recommend and ask our couples not to use filters when you post on social, but by all means you can. Filters change the appearance of an image that we edited specific to our style. You can share your images directly with your loved ones by downloading and emailing them to them – just be careful that you are sending them at full size. You can also send them a guest link to your gallery and they can view, download and order prints on their own. Feel free to share this blog with them as well if that helps! If there are specific images in your gallery you don’t want your loved ones to see, you can hide specific images so only you and I would be able to see them, but no one else.

Two brides look at a rainbow that appeared behind them in Joshua Tree.

Ordering Prints/Products

While you can download your images and print them where ever you’d like, I highly recommend ordering directly through us via email or through your gallery. General public print locations often use poor quality paper and do not color match the images. Another benefit of ordering through us or your gallery means you get guaranteed customer service if needed. Here are all the print options we offer through the gallery:

  • Matted Framed Prints
  • Metal Prints
  • Glass box for loose prints (also offer a wooden and linen box)
  • Calendars
  • Cards
  • Ornaments
  • Print Packs
  • Float Framed prints
  • Pano Prints
  • Albums (You can design your own album, or you can order an album through us, see below for pros, cons and what the different options are)

To purchase any products/prints, when you are in your gallery you want to hit the shop option in the top right. From there you can select what you would like to order and go from there.

Throughout the ordering process the gallery does a great job of telling you about the product, what your options are and how to select images. Keep in mind some sizes will crop images, this is where it might be helpful to order directly through us. Also keep in mind the orientation of the image you are selecting for a print/product.

When you’re ordering prints whether through the gallery or not, you want to measure the space on the wall you plan to order the print for to make sure you are ordering the right size. Determine frame size, then print size. Anything you order through the gallery will be professional framed. If you are framing on your own, make sure you are not putting a print directly against glass as that can cause damage to the print over time. Double check the image name you are printing before printing to make sure it is the exact one – there may be variations in edits from your sneak peeks and your full gallery + you may have similar images in a gallery with small differences in framing, expression, etc.

My recommended paper for printing is Luster or a Semi-Gloss.

When you order through the gallery, we have a 3 day waiting period before it goes to print, so if you have questions or anything you want us to review before it goes through please email us as soon as you place your order.

You will receive a print discount for the first few days your gallery is live and at your one year anniversary.

A couple shares their vows together.

Albums

As a kid or even an adult, have you looked at your parents or grandparents wedding album? Have you looked up at their printed wedding photos on the walls of their home or other family members homes? I remember vividly seeing my aunts wedding photos up on the wall at my grandma’s house. She looked like the most stunning bride, the big smile and the beautiful ballgown. She was so beautiful and happy. Pictures have the ability to tell you so much more about a person’s personally, their spirit, their passion and history of their life.

Imagine flipping through your grand parents wedding album and not seeing just two people standing side by side smiling and photos the exact same with those they love.

Imagine instead flipping through your grandparents wedding album and getting a glimpse into who they were at the age they got married, getting to see them doing what they love to do together during that time in their life, exuding happiness, love and their true existence. Imagine flipping through their wedding album and being able to read it like a story of two people in love, living their life to the fullest.

Now, you are the grand parent. Imagine getting to share that story with your loved ones – they would probably think you are pretty bada** for an old person and open up more, allowing for a deeper connection.

When we are capturing your elopement day, we are photographing purposefully in a style that is documenting the story of your day. This allows you to look back through an album that you can flip through for years and be able to share it with someone else. This allows you to fully share the story of your elopement day from start to end.

  1. Design your own album and order through the gallery.

It is really easy to order an album through the gallery. You can see below what it looks like to design your own. Size wise you can choose between 8×8, 10×10 and 12×12. There are different cover options as well. Design is made easy because for each page you select from well crafted page options and drop in the images you want to use. The downfall of this is that the designs can be limited.

A 20 paged 10×10 linen album through the gallery is $1100 to give you an idea of the price ranges when designing your own.

An example of how to design an album.
An example of the design layout.

Albums we design for you

2. Select your favorites and let us design an album for you.

This is also easy because all you do is go into your gallery and favorite all the images you would LOVE to have in your album. You do this by hitting the heart on the image. Then email us that you would like to order the album. These are the things we need to know when you email:

  • Type of album
  • Color of cover
  • Current address

Then we design the album for you and email it for your approval. We can make changes over a call or email as needed. Once the final design is approved by you both, we place the order and then it gets delivered to your door within a few weeks! The thing is, WE LOVE designing albums. Traci used to design albums for the PGA golfers at the end of a big win, all the presidents after their time serving in office for the PGA and she has been designing wedding/elopement albums for 4 years! The bonus here is we can get as creative as we want.

Here are the album offerings if we are designing for you:

  • Fine Art Handcrafted Lay flat Leather album coming in – distressed tan, white or a dark brown espresso.
  • Signature Flushmount – this album comes in a natural linen, oatmeal, old grey, noir, aspen or harvest

Additional album choices are:

  • 10×10 or 12×12
  • Number of pages: 30, 40, 50 or 60
  • Writing on the cover (like your names, date, coordinates, etc)

Sample prices:

  • 10×10 40 paged linen album with names on the cover is $1100
  • 12×12 60 paged hand crafted leather album without anything on the cover is $1850

These are custom crafted albums, so prices may vary and we can figure out the best size based on what you’re envisioning. The best thing to do is select your favorites, email your ideal size/pages/etc and then we will give you a quote and we go from there or you can email us your budget and we can tell you what will fit that.

We get asked a lot if you can do an album as a gift without the other person knowing. Yes, simply be sure you are emailing us directly about the album without your partner cc’d in the email – or you can even text us!

FAQ

  • If we did not photograph your elopement/wedding can we design and order an album for you?? YES! As long as you give us access to your high resolution files we can work with you in crafting your album.

  • How do you handle prints with care? Our hands have oils in them and often dirt even if you can’t see it. Whenever you are handling prints or album pages be sure you are doing so on a clean surface with freshly clean hands. You can wear gloves to be even safer!!

  • When do I need to order prints by? You can order prints whenever you want!! Some couples order prints within one week to utilize the discount, some couples wait months and years. We will always be here to help you when you are ready to order your prints. We love jumping on zoom calls, regular calls or communicating through email to help couples figure out what and how to print.

  • What’s the best way to store my photos? Store your album laying flat. Keep it in the box to protect it even more so. We highly recommend not keeping it in any high traffic areas unless you’re sure it won’t catch an accidental coffee spill. When it comes to prints in a frame, be mindful of the wall you are putting a print on. If the spot on your wall receives a lot of sunlight, it could fade the print overtime.

  • I have no idea what to print, how do I decide? We recommend looking at the wall space you want to put prints on and using a wall safe adhesive and template to play around with sizes and spacing to see how you want to create the space on the wall.

A couple cuddles in bed together before their elopement day.
Adventure and Vow Moab Elopement Photographer