Matted Wedding Albums

The vast majority of wedding albums today are flush-mount. The images are printed on one sheet of paper (either a C-print, which is a traditional photographic print; or press-printed, which means the images are printed by press on a high quality art paper.) The paper is then mounted “flush” (edge-to-edge) on a thick, archival substrate, and the pages are bound like a traditional album.

The nice thing about flush-mount albums is that you can do anything you want with the page layout — you can put multiple pictures together to tell the story of a moment, or splash one single image across a double-page spread to make a big impact.

However, there is something about traditional matted wedding albums that we really love. The simplicity and elegance of the mat framing the photograph, and the contrast between the faint shine of the photograph with the subtle, soft texture of the mat… it has an entirely different effect than the more modern look of a flush-mount album. It’s a beautiful presentation that seems to guarantee it will stand the test of time.

The matted album that we offer is produced by Renaissance Albums, a company we love for many reasons. First of all, they have great taste; their cover options are gorgeous and run the gamut from silk shantungs and brocades to seasoned leather to natural linen. Second, they are based in New York and all their albums are handmade in the U.S. And third, they are one of the few album companies left who offer a wedding album crafted entirely with hand-cut mats.

Here are some details of the matted album we created for Elizabeth and Bryan, bound in black silk shantung with an inset, off-center photograph on the cover: