The modern wedding has moved beyond being a simple ceremony and celebration with family and friends.
With the vast range of fantastic ideas and services available, weddings have become increasingly individual and more of us are looking for ways to create a personalized wedding album to bring back the special memories of our unique day.
In the past wedding albums tended to look much the same.
A series of formal photographs would be mounted in a leather-bound wedding album, each page separated by an opaque interleave to help protect the photographs.
Your parents probably had one for their wedding and their parents before them.
They were the sort of wedding album that was kept under lock and key, hidden on the bookshelves, only to be brought on special occasions.
But today's modern couples want something more accessible and contemporary and many are choosing to create their wedding album themselves, that says so much more about them as a couple and how they chose to celebrate their love for each other.
And now that most wedding photographers shoot in digital format, creating a personalized wedding album couldn't be easier.
Firstly, when you commission a photographer to take your wedding photographs, make sure that they are prepared to give you copyright approval to use the photographs as you wish.
You might find it useful to get this in writing at the time you book your photographer and sign any contract.
Most wedding photographers now offer a number of different services, or packages, and many start with a basic service of attending the wedding and creating a high resolution disk of your wedding photographs.
This is probably all you need to start creating your personalized wedding album.
You can then order prints from them, or from a high street retailer, of your favorite photographs and simply attach them into a personalized wedding album of your choice, interspersed with other wedding memorabilia you have collated - such as a pressed flower from your bouquet or button hole, a copy of your wedding invitation and a place setting, perhaps even a poem or reading you have prepared for the wedding.
Or you could create an album with one of the many online publishing companies, such as Photobox or Lulu.
Simply download the software and you'll find that most of these publishers offer an auto-fill option - so you don't even have to worry about which photograph to put where! But if you want to create a personalized wedding album, to be enjoyed for generations to come, why not tell the story of your wedding in words as well as pictures? Just imagine how much your children and grandchildren will enjoy reading about how you both met, how you proposed, why you chose your dress, all the emotions and joy you felt on your wedding day? It would mean so much more to them, and engage their interest far than a traditional wedding album.
So much effort goes into planning your special day, yet it's surprising how quickly those memories fade.
A written story, to accompany your photographs, is a great way to ensure that those memories never fade.