Wedding Album

As far as I know only album companies that do these albums only do them for professional photographers, they are not cheap either hence why your photographer quoted you £500, mine start at £650.

Depending on the size and providing that the photographer is not trying to cut corners with the quality then £500 is not a bad price.

The advantage for you when you source your own is that you will not have the designing time element of the cost that the photographer has which gets past on to you.

If a photographer is serious about their business then its is bad practice to supply an album that is below a certain standard because they should not want to have any problems with quality- issue returns. So the albums that serious photographers use do tend to be not the cheap ones. Then on top of the initial high cost to the photographer you are paying for their time in designing the layout. So for this reason when a photographer is including an album in a wedding package - (total price depending) then the included album is not likely to be the same quality as a separately paid for one.

I agree with what others, your photographer isn't charging £500 to put the photos into album, the cost of the album is the vast majority of that cost and the rest is for them to design it. Hopefully that cost is for a high quality album that wont fade like cheaper ones, and the quality of the paper, printing and cover will be noticeably better.

If you'd like a cheaper album there are lots of online companies that let you design your own for around £100.