I’ve been married going on a year and a half now, and I have an entire iPhoto library full of the gorgeous pictures my sister took of our wedding and reception.  My groom and I have settled into married life, I managed to get the thank you cards out on time, and I’ve made good use of some of our wedding gifts (oh, KitchenAid mixer, I love you), but I still feel guilty that I have not scrapbooked up a storm with our wedding pictures and created something to house the beautiful memories of our wedding day.

My mom keeps trying to get me into scrapbooking, and while I love being crafty, the idea of scrapbooking our wedding is daunting to me.  I want something that looks sleeker, more elegant, and won’t involve me wasting hours with glue dots and decorative edge scissors.  What could be more perfect than a customizable, professionally printed photo book?

As a Mac user, I love iPhoto and have finally gotten all the photos imported and arranged into individual albums.  I started trying out the book creation feature in iPhoto, which is a lot of fun, but honestly I am less than impressed with the pricing of the books and the lack of real customization.  This got me looking around on the Internet for a viable alternative.

Blurb is the service I’m most excited about trying out.  I have downloaded their free BookSmart software to try and I can’t wait to get started!  It integrates directly with iPhoto, Flickr and more and lets you make books of all kinds.  The best part is that it’s highly customizable and a LOT cheaper than the iPhoto books for the same quality.  They even publish a blog full of helpful tips and tricks.  There are other services out there, like all-around awesome self-publishing service Lulu, or Flickr partner QOOP, but Blurb seems to be exactly what I’m looking for.  I look forward to posting my thoughts once I have a photo book created!  I have a feeling these might be finding their way under a few Christmas trees this year…