Enlarge a Special Detail
A slice of the wedding that's blown up to larger-than-life-size can dress up a wall like a piece of art. (Depending on the photo quality, try 11" x 14" or larger.) What to choose: a portrait of your bouquet, candles on a table, your bridal shoes. Black-and-white is especially effective. Take the print to a pro to be matted and framed (white and black are always safe bets). Hang in a niche or over a bureau.
Publish the Story of You
Imagine your wedding as a coffee-table book. Design teams at custom publishers will lay out your shots and vary the pacing (pages of the wedding party followed by a spread of the wedding site), then bind them into a sleek hardcover book. If your photographer doesn't offer the service, contact a manufacturer like GraphiStudio (graphistudio.com).
Create Some Shelf Life
Photo display ledges and rails, available at stores like Pottery Barn (potterybarn.com) and Crate & Barrel (crateandbarrel.com) and from companies like Exposures (exposuresonline.com), let you create a mini gallery. For a unified look, select all black-and-white prints, or use identical frames to give any group visual cohesion. Don't limit yourself to wedding photos; shots from your honeymoon lend interest. A framed invitation adds charm. Perfect display spots: a hallway, family room, or powder room.
Think Inside the Box
As an album alternative, have a dozen of your favorite wedding photos enlarged and matted, then place them in an archival storage box (try dickblick.com), a gallery box, or a colorful transparent photo box (organize.com). When you're not browsing through them, the stacked containers make a statement all on their own.
Invest in Archival Effects
If you do go the album route (and, frankly, it is the easiest and most popular way to store photos), a chic alternative to the standard white-padded bridal tome is John Porter's Everyday Archives system (johnportereverydayarchives.com), a collection of museum-quality books you can custom-organize. And the price ($3.99 to $39.99) is right.
If Your Videographer Doesn't Show…
You can still have a DVD of the wedding, thanks to companies that transfer your prints and digital pictures to a video disc. Costs range from $29.95 for a bare-bones package from NuMedia Memories (numediamemories.com) to $500 for a show including 300 images and background music from Digital Memories (digitalmemoriesonline.net). A new digital picture frame retrieves photos from your computer and displays them slide-show-style on its 19-inch screen; the PV1910 costs $1,200 from photovu.com.
With a flatbed scanner and slide-show software, you can do the work yourself. There's a lot of software to choose from; to simplify matters, Canon includes DVD PictureShow 2 SE Basic (a digital photo slide-show program), with its CanoScan 3200F scanner, for about $100 (usa.canon.com).
