Sharing & Reviewing My Premier Lay Flat Wedding Photo Book from Snapfish

FYI: this blog post is serving 2 purposes... 1) to share with you my wedding book, and 2) to kind of give a review of Snapfish's Premier Lay Flat photo books since there are ZERO online with pictures. {I know, I looked.} So, this might be a doozy...get ready!!

Last summer, one of my items on my Summer To-Do list was to make my our wedding photo album. For various reasons {#1 being I'm a slacker} it just didn't get done. Fast forward ten more months, and summer is fortunately here again! I've been out of work for about 6 weeks and finally I can say that our beaUTIFUL wedding pictures are displayed to my crazy OCD standards in a photo book that I made my very own self!!

I have previously used Snapfish to make our wedding guestbook. I used pictures of me & Alex  from the very beginning {2002!!} to our most recent engagement pictures. Instead of having all our wedding guests sign a book with just their names, they got to sign our photo book and leave a note if they wished! It turned out wonderful and I still look at it from time to time. It makes my heart smile. It's a great little treasure of mine.

Wedding pictures were SUPER important to me. I had a great photographer, Kerri Crutchfield, and from the moment I saw her sneak peek on Facebook I just knew I was going to love my wedding pictures!

This is what I knew:

-I wanted a {nice} photo book

-I couldn't dare pick out "just" 100ish pictures for my book

-I am too particular and would be super annoying to someone if they were trying to make a book for me

-Therefore, I wanted to design the book myself

-I hands down prefer Snapfish's photobook-making software over any other company's

-I needed to make this happen for as cheap as I could... {do y'all know my husband?!?!}

So obviously the thing to do was make another Snapfish book. I knew I wanted a 12"x12" book. I wanted it bigger than my 8"x11" guestbook and thought 11"x14" would be a bit "much." Luckily for me, Snapfish just came out with their new Premier Lay-flat Photo Books, which apparently is different from making a custom book and upgrading to have the pages lay flat. This new book is described with the statement, "New seamless lay-flat binding, extra-thick premium pages, and a deluxe matte cover make these books perfect for celebrating weddings, vacations, and life's sweetest moments." Sounds good to me!! I just wanted thick pages and lay-flat binding in a 12"x12" book so this worked perfect for me!!

Anyways, I worked on my book when I felt like it and got it all nice & finished. I had a question because I was being super particular, wanting to make sure the cover would be perfect. I used Snapfish's "Chat with us Live" online customer service option {which I always use with companies...way more efficient than calling a toll-free number!} and after chatting with the representative, they gave me a coupon code for 50% off my book!! A previous rep had told me you can only get 20% off the Premier Lay Flat books, and typically 50% off coupons I see do exclude those. I was SUPER happy to see that the new coupon code worked and I saved **$82**!!

Don't tell Snapfish, but I would have paid the full price for the book, I love it that much. ;) I was happy with the 20% off coupon. So yeah, ecstatic about the 50% off!

Anyways, I ordered my book July 28 and received it in the mail on August 2nd... that is a FAST turn-around time! My tracking showed an expected delivery date of August 8th, so my package was 6 days early! Just another reason I love Snapfish.

So far, in looking at my book, there are only two tiny issues. One Snapfish can work on in the future, and one I am currently chatting online with a customer service rep about.** My one beef is that there's nothing to keep it in. I know that's not included in the price and they never said it did. I just wish I had something to kind of wrap it up in or keep it from wearing with time. Y'all know what I'm saying?! I might have to make something. {HAHA! Just kidding!}

And my other beef is that my book preview showed that I filled all the pages up, but when I received my book there is a blank two-sided page in the back (shown below). It doesn't look too bad, just looks like I didn't put anything on 2 pages. And I would have, had I had known the page was added. Just sayin'! {SEE THE UPDATE AT THE BOTTOM OF THIS POST REGARDING THIS ISSUE!}

Okay, so, now for the big reveal...

Happiness Within is right!!

the front cover

the back cover

A piece of tissue paper/vellum/whatever it's called in the front

Page 1 :)

One thing I will say is that I knew I was gonna be pushing it with fitting all my pics on 100 pages. {I am not crazy. I promise.} I didn't want to smoosh all my beloved pictures onto a small amount of pages. I wanted the photos enlarged so you could see all the smiling faces, little details, and the beautiful backgrounds. Surprisingly, I actually ended up fitting almost all my wedding photos on 85ish pages, which saved me a little bit of money! 

nice & thick :)

trying to get a good pic of the thickness of the pages

And here's just a couple snapshots of some of my favorite pages...

{excuse the blurriness of my photography!}

the details

the dress

"what might have been" / our "Plan A" ... thanks, rain! 

Pawpaw got a full-page spread!! ♥

me and my beautiful bridesmaids

love the pops of yellow all throughout the book!

special moment with my Dad

the kiss

Will cherish these pictures of my Pawpaw crying happy tears forever ♥

"and they lived happily ever after..." ♥

As you can tell, I ended up not going with any single picture full-page spreads. That's probably the purpose of the lay-flat books, but I did not necessarily have any picture I wished to enlarge to 1 ft by 2 ft. Haha! I did do several pages with just one picture, and that was big enough for me and my book. I personally just wanted the lay-flat pages to keep it clean and professional looking, as well as to be able to see all of any page that had pictures right up to the edge. 

**UPDATE: I chatted with "Yeshwanth" online, telling him/her about my issue. At first, they said it was "just the cover" or something like that. I was politely adamant that no, this was an error. I did not ask for anything specific, just wanted to make them aware of the issue and see if there was anything I could do about it. Yeshwanth had me upload pictures of my issue with the book {shown above} to confirm it. After confirmation, the conversation went a little something exactly like this...

Yeshwanth: Nicole , I have just now checked the snap shots and i see that the extra page has been added to the book . Please accept our sincere apologies for the extra page.

Yeshwanth: Shall i resubmit the order for you for free of cost?

nicole mullen: Would I need to send the 1st book back
nicole mullen: ?

Yeshwanth: No need of sending the book back to us.

nicole mullen: Oh my gosh, well then Yes, that would be marvelous!

Yeshwanth: Please give me a moment.

Yeshwanth: Just now I have re submitted your order with 2 day shipping to the above address at free of cost.. You will receive a confirmation e-mail from us within few minutes.

nicole mullen: I appreciate it so much

Yeshwanth: It was a pleasure assisting you. Is there anything else I can help with today?

Now how is THAT for customer service??? 100% customer satisfaction is what I am talking about!! That right there is what keeps customers coming BACK. Can I get an Amen?! 

So, as you can see, the photo books are definitely worth their price, especially to commemorate such a special occasion. I think the cost right now is $79.99 for the Premier Lay Flat photo books. However, that's just for their standard 20 pages! I think it's $2.79ish for a set of two extra pages {so 4 pages including front & back} after that. My book ended up being like $164 in the end, but remember, there's usually a 50% off coupon you can find/use! {Try retailmenot.com or chat online with a customer service rep ahead of time to get a code!}

Hopefully this post will give future photo book makers a better idea of what they're doing and investing in. If you have any questions, leave a comment! :) 

At the end of the day, I just loved the thing & wanted to share my great experience doing this! Now, onto the next thing on my summer to-do... only 2 weeks left of summer! {OMG!}

♥,

Nicole

Oh, and in no way did Snapfish ask me to do this or pay me to say these things. But I'd so advertise their stuff {obviously} ;)