Making Memories

Alternative ways to document the day, from nontraditional albums to silhouette portraits
By Tara Mandy and Meredith Levy
Editors of BFFBridal.com

Traditional wedding albums are just that: traditional. They'll never go out of style. (And nothing will please the in-laws more than a ton-of-bricks album for their coffee table.) Still, there are other, more contemporary ways to document the special moments of your wedding day.

Brides today are complementing the services of their photographer with alternative keepsakes. Wedding videos are hardly a novel idea, but a new genre has popped up: the wedding film. Wedding films produced by companies such as Motion Pictures, Inc. or the Light Mill Studios are more like artsy documentary films than traditional wedding videos. You'll get footage of the big moments (swapping vows, the first dance, cutting the cake), but you'll also get behind-the-scenes interviews with the couple as well as their friends and families.

On the less serious side, vintage photo booths (like the ones you'd find on the boardwalk or in a shopping mall) are appearing at weddings across the country. Guests can duck in anytime during the reception and pose for a series of quick-capture shots. It's sort of a new twist on leaving a disposable camera on every table and it enables you to capture (and look back on) fun moments that you (and your photographer) may miss. Photobooth.net will connect you with the best place to rent one in your area.

Another fun way to create lasting memories of your guests is to hire a silhouette artist. With Edward Scissorhands-like speed, these fascinating artists can snip out a detailed paper profile in under a minute. Let your guests take home their portraits, or compile them in a scrapbook. There are at least a few of these artists in every city. Your best bet is to look at samples and pick a style you like. Our favorite is the San Francisco area's Karl Johnson .

For something unique and elegant, we love Anne Watkins' watercolor sketches. In 12 beautiful paintings on natural-edge paper, Watkins will document everything from the bride getting ready to the last dance. Have them framed or store them in a decorative archival box.

And if you end up sticking with just a photographer, you can always modernize things by having your photographer create a coffee table-style photo book. They're fun, less expensive, and more portable than traditional albums. You can also DIY by uploading your digital photos to a site like mpix.com, blurb.com, or kodakgallery.com (whose Martha Stewart line of books costs a little more, but offers more versatile layouts).

Green tip: When purchasing your wedding bands, be proactive and ask whether the diamonds are conflict-free and if the gems were mined responsibly.

Tara and Meredith edit the wedding website BFFBridal.com