A Wedding Photo Album with a Twist

When you hear "Wedding Photo Album," I bet you think about the traditional albums put together by the photographer with all of the 'posed' pictures.

This project is anything but that!

My son and his bride have booked a photo booth for their wedding reception...you know, the kind you find on the boardwalk or in shopping malls, in which you cram as many people as you can inside, and it takes four photos and spits them out on a strip.

The traditional photo booth.

Photo booths are apparently a trend for wedding receptions.  The guests get to have a little fun (there is a box of 'props' they can use for their photos) and the bride and groom can pay a little extra to have two copies of the photo strip made -- one for the guests to take home, and one to adhere into a photo album set up right outside the booth.

My future daughter-in-law asked me to pre-decorate a photo album to use.  It does make sense...by pre-decorating the pages, we can somewhat control how the photo strips are put into the album. (We don't want just one per page -- we'd never fit them all into the album that way!)

My friend Sherrie sells Creative Memories products, and I was able to purchase a discontinued white embossed 12 x 12" album from her inventory, along with 2 packs of 15 pages and page protectors to go inside.  That gives me 60 pages (front and back) to decorate.

I'm not quite finished yet (I need to have space for at least 200 photo strips!), but I thought I would share some of the pre-decorated pages with you, in case you have to work on a similar project this summer!

This page is reserved for Ryan and Mary...their photo will go on the left side of the  'D'.

This is the first page as you open the book.  The purple glitter paper picks up the color scheme of the wedding.  I used a Puzzle Mates Puzzle Template Book to trace the outline of the letter D and added their wedding date using stickers.

This is one page of a two-page spread, titled "Down the Shore."  (It's a Philly thing to drop the 'at' in that phrase...I know better, but at some point, I gave up arguing with everyone about it!)  By laying out the 'beach towels,' I could fit 6 photo strips on these two pages.

Here is a close up of one page...the photo strips are 2" by 6", so I made the mat papers 2 1/2" by 6 1/2", and wrote on each one 'photo strip here' or simply 'photo.'  For dark papers, I wrote with a silver gel pen. I tried to leave space around each photo strip so the guest can write their names and/or a message for the couple.  On this page, the wavy 'banner' to the left of the mat is for people to sign their names.

This page is kind of fun...I used a template (unknown source) for the house, and drew the tree freehand.  I drew in journaling lines on the roof and in the tree so people would know where to leave a note!

This is a very simple layout, but I think the background paper and color scheme make it a classic.  I used the middle size of a Spellbinders "Labels Twenty" die set to cut out the red paper, and drew journaling lines on each.  The thin black borders were punch outs from a set of scrapbooking paper, but you could easily use decorative scissors on a thin strip of cardstock to create the same look.  

Still have a lot more 'pre-decorating' to do, but with 13 of the 60 pages finished, there is already room for 45 photo strips.  Mary took a look at it, and gave it rave reviews.

Can't wait to see it after the wedding, filled with the memories of the evening!