What Is the Average Price of a Wedding Album in 2025

You will get married soon or might have already tied the knot, and you are now wondering how much you should invest in a wedding album. Congratulations, having a wedding budget is essential to achieve all your priorities (professional photographer, album, print, etc.).

First, let’s avoid confusion; when speaking of wedding albums, we will focus on a lay-flat photo album in this article. We will voluntarily ignore all the other types of albums, such as:

• The old classical ones (with prints past on a page or slide in a pocket)
• Flush matted ones (completely outdated)
• Scrapbook ones
• Electronic wedding album (basically a diaporama)

With this precision, you will now discover in this article that the price of a wedding album can greatly fluctuate on several points:

• Quality of fabrication
• Characteristic and Customization
• The way your photographer sells his albums

Three different types of quality wedding albums and their average prices in 2025

Disclaimer: where did we get our data from?

To create this article, we have collected numbers from different actors of the album industry.

• Wedding Photography Industry Reports: Reports and surveys from organizations such as The Wedding Report or similar industry analysts.
• Photographers’ Insights: Blogs and forums where professional wedding photographers discuss album preferences and trends.
• Album Providers: Websites and catalogs from wedding album manufacturers like Miller’s, Graphistudio, Zookbinders, or Kiss Books.
• Wedding Planning Guides: Platforms like The Knot, Zola, or WeddingWire.
• Industry Publications: Magazines or websites like Rangefinder and PDN (Photo District News).

The average prices by type of album

It exists in many types of photo books, and neither the marketing nor the laboratories help to see clearly.
So, let’s simplify and divide all the albums into three different groups.

• Basics Coffee Table Albums: $30 – $40
• Mid Range Albums: $75 and $300
• Luxurious Albums: $750

Basic coffee table book

Those are the cheapest options available on the market, and any person in love with photography would avoid such garbage books.
They all have in common:

• Print on cheap paper with laser printing
• A printed softcover
• A standard size format
• A standard number of pages and sometimes the number of photos
• A layout made by the customer (choice among templates)

The average prices of the cheapest coffee book start around $30-$40 (before tax and delivery) and go up to $100. That cost reflects the content of the product. Photographers would always recommend clients who love photography to choose a high standard album.

Mid-Range Standard photo-book

Standard photo books are albums that everyone can order online (Shutterfly, Artifact upRising, Costco, Sam Club etc.) as long as they have the digital images and their package includes a personal right release.
They are falsely marketed as a lay-flat album (when using a poor version of the lay-flat binding) and printed on photo paper (understand here, any support that will have a photo printed on it can be considered as photo paper).

Those albums have in common:

• They are Printed on thermal or inkjet photo paper
• They use fake lay-flat binding technology
• The customer designs the layout through a specific software (takes time)
• They might have a dust jacket but no box
• They might have a few cover personalization options

Thanks to the recent evolution in printing technology, the albums have become standard products with an extremely affordable price.

They present a low range of dynamics of color and a mid-level printing resolution that most people won’t notice.

That’s why they are well-suitable for vacation books and engagement photos but not for wedding albums!

Indeed, the affordability comes with a downside: a decrease in quality. Those books are not made to last decades. They will probably turn yellow, have color fading, and pages following apart in a few decades.

The average price of a basic lay-flat album is somewhere between $100 and $300.

Handcraft top-quality wedding album

Let’s start with the premium photo book sold by professional photographers.
Those have in commons:

• Print on real photo paper using RC paper (the best professional paper for weddings)
• Use a lay-flat technology with cardboard paper inserted between each page
• Amazing cover options (real leather, wood, plexiglass, etc.).
• Personalization options (embossing with foil, engraving with lasers, gliding, etc.)
• A tailor-made layout that tells your family memories
• A box to protect and take care of the albums
• Possibilities to order books for parents
• A guarantee in case of imperfection
• A guarantee on the delivery in case of damage during transportation

Those are the best quality albums and, therefore, the ones we have chosen to offer our brides and grooms.
Those albums present a huge dynamic of colors in high definition to enjoy all the details, but most of all, they are built to last for decades and decades! Their paper is resistant to moisture, tear, dirt, temperature variation, dirty fingers, and scratches.

The average price of those best albums is somewhere between $500 to $1500.

Starting price Vs final price: Which elements increase the price of a wedding album?

The price of the same album can change depending on the options you select. That’s something to take into consideration when choosing your album or package.

Number of pages

The more photos you want to include in your album, the more pages you need. Sold per piece or by packages, the number of pages can easily double the final cost. Make sure to have enough pages. How much is enough? Usually, 40 pages (120 images) is enough for most people. But if you want to showcase a lot of images, then you need a bigger one: 80 pages or 100 pages.

Size of the album

The size of the album directly changes the quantity of material needed and, therefore, the final price.

A large 12×12 inch wedding album, or 14×14 inch, allows you to enjoy your photos printed in big on the page. You really take advantage of the high-definition image. You can better see details and people’s faces. On the opposite, with the small coffee album (8×8 inch, or 6×6), you won’t see much of the details.

Layouts

A tailor-made layout design by your photographer is a service that requires time. And time is money. Adding the option of having modifications to the clients. If you want a cheap wedding album, choose a premade layout that you can do yourself, but of course, the final result won’t be as esthetical.

Photographers’ Packages

There are different ways of selling photos. Some photographers will charge a small cost for coverage the day but won’t include any print or any digital. Then, each print (including wedding albums) would be an extra cost they will sell at a high price. Despite you have the illusion of paying just for what you need, in the end, you might pay much more.

Beware of photographers who also include cheap quality albums to attract clients. When you want to upgrade to better quality, you might be surprised.

On the other hand, some (most) photographers will come with packages that seem more expensive at first sight but where everything is already included.

Evolution of the average prices of wedding albums in the last 20 years: are the prices going up or down?

Over the past two decades, the cost of wedding albums has been influenced by factors such as material quality, customization options, and production methods. Here’s an overview of how these elements have shaped pricing trends:

Early 2000s:

• Traditional wedding albums, often handcrafted with materials like leather and high-quality paper, typically ranged from $500 to $1,000. Customization was limited, and production involved significant manual labor, contributing to higher costs.

Mid-2000s to Early 2010s:

• The advent of digital photography and online printing services introduced more affordable options. Standard photo books became available for as low as $50 to $200, though premium, customized albums remained in the $500 to $1,000 range.

Mid-2010s to Present:

• Advancements in printing technology, the creation of big photography laboratories specialized in the mass production of wedding albums, and, therefore, increased competition have expanded the range of available wedding albums.
  Basic photo books can be found for $50 to $10, while higher-quality albums range from $150 to $350. Premium, extensively customized albums can still cost between $500 and $1,500 or more.

As you can see on the chart, the average price of the cheapest albums didn’t go down much. Taking into consideration the inflation rate, we could say that it stayed the same. But, on the opposite, in the last 20 years, the price of luxurious albums actually went down by 25%!

Now, another element to consider is the average size of the albums that are sold.

Evolution of wedding album size in the last 20 years.

As mentioned, for the album, size matters. And if we look at the evolution of the average size of wedding albums over the last 20 years, we can see that luxurious ones increased a lot to 14×14. While small size one decreases to 6×6 inch.

What to conclude?
The new smaller size photo book didn’t bring the price down. The laboratory is actually making more benefits on that album (regarding the quality and cost of fabrication).
On the other side, an increase in size (for the luxurious ones) didn’t bring prices higher. In the longer term, the average price even decreases and offers larger albums, which, in the end, is better for the consumer.

Conclusion: Top-quality wedding albums remain expensive, but today, the average price is lower than in the past for better quality.

Based on all the elements mentioned above, you should now understand the cost of a wedding album reflects the inner attribute of its content. As explained in this article, a luxury wedding album with a precious leather cover and a custom layout will cost much more than a coffee table album printed on cheap paper.

The more options you choose, the more pages you take, and the more expensive the albums become (even if there are more reasons why albums are expensive). Indeed, designing the layout takes time, and photographers need to get compensation for their work.

Our recommendations

At French-Touch-Photography, we provide our customers with all the Digital images in High Definition with a personal model release. It’s part of our pricing philosophy.

We strongly encourage clients to order our albums, given their features and durability, but it’s not an obligation. If you are interested, check out our packages.

If you are not planning to spend that much money and don’t have the budget yet, we recommend waiting instead of going cheaper. But whatever you decide to do, remember that the final product of wedding photography is an album! So, make sure to buy prints of your photos because time flies, and you might have no memories if you don’t do it today!