Your Wedding, Your Mitzvah, Forever on Cloud 9

Celebrating a mitzvah? Or perhaps you spent months planning a beautiful wedding, and in a New York minute it’s over. While you have endless memories, you’re now left with hundreds of photographs.

Enter Michelle Penn, memory album extraordinaire. As if by magic, after a bar or bat mitzvah or wedding occurs, that’s when the talented native goes to work. Her creative and memorable albums assembled from your digital photographs share your simcha, tell the story and preserve your occasion for years to come.

Penn’s popular company, Cloud 9 Albums, specializes in creating professional, lay-flat, thick photo albums. She shared, “Cloud 9 Albums has been a wonderful way to incorporate my love of photography with a creative outlet of designing albums. I grew up in Atlanta, and my parents were always into photography. In fact, my dad had a dark room in our basement when I was young. My husband, Michael, and I met in college at the University of Maryland, we’ve been married for 31 years and live in Alpharetta and have four wonderful children. Jacob is 27 and lives in Denver, we have 25-year-old twins, Bryan, who lives in New York, and Evan, (Boston), and Allie is 19 and in college in North Carolina.”

With creative passion, Cloud 9 Albums was born in early 2020, following Penn’s youngest child’s bat mitzvah. She decided to design and create an album herself and fell in love with the process and finished product. She said, “At the same time as my business began, the world shut down, and I found myself wanting to create and design more. I posted a simple offer in an Atlanta-based Jewish moms Facebook group, letting families know that I could create bar or bat mitzvah albums for them if they needed help. That small post marked the beginning of Cloud 9 Albums.”

Penn quickly learned that there are hundreds of families who never created an album from their child’s mitzvah. Some of her clients delayed this decision, finding albums too expensive, others said their photographers didn’t offer albums at all, and many genuinely planned to do it themselves, but never got around to it or didn’t know where to start. Even more surprising were families who had already paid for an album but felt overwhelmed by the process of selecting their favorite photos, leaving the project unfinished. Penn ensures that her clients have the appropriate rights to print their photographs for personal use and her standard album is $600. That includes a 10” x 10” high-quality, lay-flat thick page album with 30 pages. Smaller parent or grandparent albums that are purchased with the main album start at $275.

Mother of three, Sabrina Appelbaum, used Penn for all her kids’ bar/bat mitzvah albums. A repeat customer, Appelbaum raved about Penn and said, “When you first get the link from your photographer after the event, it is overwhelming to go through hundreds of photos and narrow it down for an album. I had the link and no albums for years with my older two until I saw Michelle’s company mentioned on a Facebook group.”

Appelbaum added, “Secondly, Michelle’s albums are perfection. They are the classic thick pages that denote this is a special event. But the actual pages are a modern approach filled with creativity. She will use decor pics as the background with candid on top! After finding her for my older two (and making both their albums at once) she was the first and only person I reached out to this past December when I got the photographers’ link to my youngest’s bar mitzvah photos. As I said to Michelle, I hope she is still in business when my kids get married!”

Penn loves her company, knowing that she is bringing joy to a bar or bat mitzvah or wedding celebration and said, “There are so many things I love about Cloud 9 Albums. I love getting a glimpse at my clients’ most special moments. I love going through all the pictures and picking out my favorites. And the best part is designing the layouts and figuring out where to showcase each picture. Nothing beats the email I get after sharing the first draft with my clients and they are so happy. I’m honored to create something they will return to year after year; an album that instantly brings back that ‘cloud 9’ feeling and all the joy surrounding it.”

One of the things clients appreciate most about Penn’s books is how simple and stress-free the process is. They don’t need to sort through thousands of photos or choose their favorites. Penn carefully reviews every photo and selects the ones that tell the story of the bar or bat mitzvah or wedding day. Clients are often amazed that she seems to know who the most important people are in their photos, but she finds that it usually reveals itself naturally through the moments captured.”

The process is also simple. Penn designs the first draft of the album online and shares a digital proof with the client. From there, they go back and forth as needed. She makes changes, swapping photos, or adding images until the album is just what the client wants. Once finalized, the album is printed and shipped directly to the client. Penn’s goal is to make the process effortless so families can simply enjoy the final product.

Penn said, “The album consistently amazes my clients. I hear again how impressed they are by the quality and craftsmanship. The lay flat pages have seams that are barely noticeable, and the pages themselves are significantly thicker than those in a standard album. Clients can choose from several cover options. The majority stick with the standard cover of a photo cover with linen on the spine and back or upgrade to genuine leather. The albums are 10” x 10” but other sizes can be requested. There is also an option to add a crystal overlay on the photo, which has become especially popular for wedding albums. Many of my families get a smaller 8” x 8” album for their parents or grandparents as well.”

Over the years, Penn has created albums for a wide range of celebrations — from destination bar mitzvahs in the mountains of Colorado to a bar mitzvah trip to Israel to drive-by and Zoom bar mitzvahs during the pandemic. From elegant New York City weddings to intimate weddings in a local venue, every album tells a unique story.

Since launching Cloud 9 Albums, she has created approximately 250 custom albums for clients in 19 states across the country. What began as a passion project has grown into a business that serves families far beyond Atlanta, all looking for a meaningful way to preserve their most important milestones.

Penn said, “No matter how big or how small the celebration, these moments deserve to be remembered. And there’s no better way to preserve them than with a beautiful album — especially when you don’t have to lift a finger!”

You can reach Michelle Penn at Cloud9AlbumsATL@gmail.com and let her put you right back on cloud 9 with an album that makes your mitzvah forever memorable.