A colleague of ours was recently offended that his client wanted to include her personal digital snapshots in her wedding album. The response was something like: “There’s no place for that crap in my beautiful album! I told her, ‘Absolutely not!’”

I just shrugged, agreeing that, of course, while the quality would pale to professional photos, personal shots from someone’s throwaway point-and-shoot or iPhone are no less important than the ones they pay the big bucks for to get from us.

“So, you put those shots in those books you do?” was our colleague’s question.

“Absolutely,” was, and is, our answer.

In constructing our last two wedding books, we included at least three double-page spreads of past photos – those taken over several years, dozens of locations and events. Why? Those photos are part of our couples’ history; and they are important.