Learn more about wedding photography

Anyone who knows me knows that I spend way too much time thinking about how to keep my favorite memories at my fingertips. I spent about an hour last night writing letters to each of my daughters in a little notebook that I keep for each of them, and I’ve been taking one second of video every single day to compile into my yearly “One Second A Day” videos. And as a photographer, I’ve gone all in on highlighting our most cherished memories through photographs in our home.

But one piece that we put extra effort into both highlighting and protecting is our wedding album. Our album sits on an open bookshelf in our family room, and as our girls get older and taller, it’s important for us to keep the album protected from sticky, curious little hands.

We put the album in a custom engraved bamboo album box last year. It really completes the look in the display—the album looks great standing alone among other books and items (we just topped it off with a little faux succulent for interest).

In general, we try to add levels to our open bookshelf to give it balance. The bottom shelf has three big baskets filled with toys so that the girls can grab toys and put them away as they play (or more likely, dump them out and leave them—but at least they’re easy to put away). We mixed up the shelves with stacked books topped with a variety of photos and plants, and our top shelf is dedicated to our yearly memory boxes to keep all of our favorite photos and small keepsakes from each year (handprints, a few sample art pieces from the girls, hospital bracelets from when they were born, etc.).

And if you’re looking for a little help mixing sentimental items with a stylish look in your home, check out the interior design company, Havenly. They have some really affordable packages to help you with the interior design of your home (especially for those newlyweds out there who are just starting to design their homes together).

Want a custom bamboo album box for your own home?

And now for some exciting news—I’m rolling out a new branch of my photography studio to help more people get custom keepsakes in their homes. I’m now offering custom designed bamboo boxes, memory boxes, albums and framed prints to everyone, whether you’ve worked with me as a photography client in the past or not.

You can check out more details about custom wall art and keepsakes right here.

I just realized that Jeff snuck his lego sailboat onto the top shelf—ha.

Thanks to Havenly for asking me to highlight a sentimental item in my home and inspiring this post.

Learn more about wedding photography

I’ve been offering complimentary wall design for all of my A&Co. couples, families and seniors for about two years now—I realized that it can be so hard to figure out which images to print, how many to print and how to display them in a way that pulls the whole room together.

So I took a bit of inspiration from Joanna, Chip, Drew and Jonathan (a few of my HGTV favorites), and I started using a tool that lets clients see a digital version of the final look before choosing a final layout.

Here’s what you need to do to see exactly what art will look like to scale on your own walls:

Three Steps to a Gorgeous Wall Gallery

Step One: Tape an 8.5×11″ sheet of paper to any wall that you want to see designed. Take a photo straight on (or as straight on as possible). Try to capture the full wall if you can so we can see how framed art will balance across the space. Email me all of the wall photos. If you think you might want mix in other photos from prior sessions or milestones (like the example above), you can use wetransfer.com to send up to ten other photos.

Step Two: I will set up design ideas for you in my wall design tool. Check out a real live version of the wall designer right here (note: I can’t take credit for the photos on this wall design—Sheila was a past A&Co. bride who lives out of state, and I was helping her put together some ideas from a mix of recent family sessions).

Step Three: Choose your favorite design. You’re welcome to note the print sizes and order prints only to frame later (I do recommend my styrene mounted prints to avoid bending, warping or dimpling over time in the frame), or I offer full service framing with seven frame style to choose from.

When your frames are ready, you’ll pick them up in East Lansing, and you’ll have access to the original designs to guide how you hang the frames on your walls. Voila—designing wall galleries has never been so easy.