When I started out my wedding photography business, I was not a very albums-focused operation. I made the assumption that my clients would be more interested in taking their DVD of images to a photo lab themselves, now that the magical age of digital photography was upon us and allowed for that sort of thing.
Although I did offer albums as an option on my pricing list, I didn’t promote them in any way, and only one couple out of 90 in those first three years ordered one. At the time, I thought I was saving people money – that I was giving them the gift of DIY-ing to their heart’s desire.
Then I read an article saying that 95% of couples hadn’t done anything with their DVD of wedding images when interviewed five years after their wedding. It was still sitting in a drawer somewhere, just another stressor on their ever-lengthening to-do list. The thought that there could be drawers all over the country that hold thousands and thousands of dollars worth of wedding images in them, hidden away, seemed like an unfortunate misappropriation of funds (to put it mildly). This is not even to mention all the memories that could be lost when these couples find out their DVD has started to degrade over time. Read more
