Choosing to have your wedding photos printed and supplied in a wedding album or provided in digital format can be one of the hardest decisions you face when you’re planning your big day. 

Digital photos can mean flexibility, choice and an opportunity for you to create incredible, engaging content for your social channels and for you to share with family and friends quickly and easily. Printed photos supplied in a beautiful album are timeless, classic and a gorgeous memento of your big day. There are benefits to both types of format – but how do you choose? Here are a few points to consider to make the decision a bit easier for you. 

How are you planning on sharing your photos? Many couples love the flexibility of images provided purely in digital format. I will provide you with an agreed number of images based on the package you’ve chosen, and will provide you with a password-protected site for you to download the images. It’s quick and easy for you to download the ones you love the most. You can then use them to create your own content – gorgeous reels, beautiful posts and stunning stories – and you can share them with guests via a link or you can upload them to your own wedding website. It’s also really special – and nostalgic - to receive display-ready printed photos, perhaps for parents or grandparents who may want to proudly add you to their wall-of-fame. I have my own trusted suppliers who will print the photos for them, to their highest standards with proper colour correction, so you know you’re going to get the best quality images that will last. 

How quickly do you want them? Whether you choose digital or printed photos will also depend on how fast you need them. There’s nothing like that feeling of being on your honeymoon somewhere tropical with a chilled glass in your hand, looking through the photos together on your ipad and reliving the day you spent months and months planning. Printed photos naturally take longer, and if you order a wedding album you’ll need to allow time for me to receive the album and carefully put together your prints to retell the story of your day, but you’d see the digital copies sooner so you’d get the best of both worlds. 

Where are you planning on storing them? Make sure you have somewhere you can store digital copies safely and securely – cloud storage is perfect, just check your subscription, storage and renewal date. You don’t want to have your cloud storage removed because you haven’t updated your bank details, for example. I will have copies but you might have to pay a retrieval fee if years go buy and you decide you need them again  – some will waive this, but a retrieval fee is definitely something I’ve seen before among photographers. If you’re ordering a printed album, it will take up a lot of shelf space, but it’s a keepsake you’ll have forever. 

What’s your budget?  Printed photos in a wedding album are more costly than digital copies – expect to pay £500-£900 for an album of prints -  but established photographers will have their own suppliers whom they know and trust, whose albums are superior quality to those that can be found cheaper. A good photographer will know a supplier that meets your values and ethics, so if you prefer vegan leather or you want a particular colour, let them know – there’s no need to compromise on style and quality. Ask your photographer to show you examples of ‘real wedding’ albums they’ve put together so you can see the quality of the albums they provide. This way you can discover their storytelling skills, too:  an album should tell the story of your day exactly as it unfolded.  My couples love the longevity and tangibility of an album – some are lucky enough to have their own memories of leafing through dusty pages of parents’ and even grandparents’ wedding albums, and want their children to have the same opportunity to follow their parents’ love story. 

How busy are you – really? Some of my couples initially ask for digital-only format, intent on getting them printed themselves and ordering and creating their own album. But life gets in the way, they’re incredibly busy and before they know it, months – even years – have passed, and it’s still on their household admin list.  I know exactly how this feels: my wife and I got married, relocated from London and had a premature baby in the same year. I know for a fact if we’d been provided digital images, they would be backed up somewhere safe but would remain digital until the end of time. Instead, our photographer provided prints in the most beautiful bound album that we leaf through with a glass of fizz on every wedding anniversary, sometimes joined by our elderly parents (lamenting how young everyone looks) and sometimes joined by the children (the reason for how much older we look!). 

What would you genuinely prefer? Ultimately the decision is yours, and I will be there to chat to and help you decide which package is right for you. If you’re looking for a visual story of your wedding day, a photo album is a timeless choice. If you’d prefer the flexibility and ‘shareability’ of digital prints, go for a digital-only option. Don’t forget many photographers will offer a ‘mix and match’ package with digital and print, and if you see the digital prints and realise you just don’t have the time to put together an album yourself, a good photographer would be delighted to put one together for you.