Advice on Wedding Album Design

Well, after putting it off forever (we didn't like our photographer's initial proposal), my wife and I have finally gotten to putting our wedding album together. However, we have a small problem: some of the photos are color, and others are black and white. I have no idea why they didn't just take all color photos, since they used digital SLRs, but that's the way it is. Thus, for the album, we can do all black and white, or mixed. All color is not an option since there are a few essential photos that are black and white. The album is a "magazine-style" album: bound like a coffee table book, 10 X 10 inches, with photos printed directly onto the paper. Typically, these sorts of albums are done in a cheesy yearbook/collage style, with photos on top of photos and romantic phrases overlaid here and there. As you can imagine, this will not do for the Foo household. So, we are making our format spare and minimal like what you'd see in an artistic photography book: one image per page (for the most part), surrounded by varying degrees of white space. The photographs are mostly candid, natural shots, with only a few portraits, and they chronologically trace the events of the evening. Would it look stupid to have random photos in black-and-white while most are in color? Or should we go all black-and-white? Unless it wasn't obvious, we can turn the color photos into black and white, but not vice-versa. I'm interested in perspectives on how photography is, or should be, artistically presented as much as I am in advice specific to wedding albums. Thanks! Sample pages:

^^^ I don't get it. What is your solution for the color/B&W problem?

Gotcha. I'm thinking approximately 2.5 color photos for each black and white one.


Eh, too lazy for that. Anyway, we want to keep the design super simple--nothing too clever or gimmicky. So, the issue is really this: would it be jarring to have a black and white image thrown in every three or four photos?

Ah, now that's helpful. I suppose so long as we single out the black and white photos and don't put multiple ones on the same page, they'll stand out in such a way that they don't stand out. We have no choice but to micro-manage here. In their proposal, they put in all these random photos of people we don't . . . care about. And there are entire, full-page photos of random details, like the monogram on our cake. Also, we just don't like the magazine-style layout. We picked the photographer because he is the best wedding photojournalist in the DC area, and one of the best nationwide. The photos are phenomenal--we just don't trust his layout design nearly as much. How, may I ask, did your wedding photos wind up in Town and Country?

Oh, I know they're not all gimmicky, but I don't think we need much help on the actual design of the pages. It's more about how one should distribute black and white photos in a largely color album, and which photos make sense to turn black and white.

I dunno, how the heck would I have known that? Is it so implausible that the editors were trailing you around? I would trail you around for the caviar residue alone. Thanks. We have a lot of good ones, but I didn't want to post anything too personal.

It was an unfoofable evening.