Images do not live in albums. Images live in projects. Albums are only virtual collections (groupings) of images. The actual images remain in the project.

I would place the entire wedding in a single project. I would then apply a star rating to all 700+ images in the project. Inside the project, I would create an album for each part of the service as you stated above (1 - Venue, 2 - Before, 3 - During, 4 - Signing, etc). Next I would select the project, set the view to thumbnail view, and filter the view to only display the image thumbnails with a 3-star or better rating (using filter button in top-right corner). Finally, I would select the image thumbnails associated with each portion of the service, and I would drag-n-drop them into their album associated with their respective part of the service.

Using this method I will have an album for each portion of the service that only contains the images that are rated at three stars or better. Remember that the images are really stored in the project. The albums are just virtual collections (groupings) of the images in the project. The images have not actually moved down into the albums.

If you select the project and disable the filter, you will notice that all 700+ images are there. If you select one of the albums, you will notice that only those images from that part of the service and that have 3+ star rating are displayed.

There are more elaborate ways to do this, but this is the simplest.

For example, you could apply a keyword to each image that associates it with one or more parts of the service (eg. venue, before, during, signing, reception, leaving). You could then create separate smart albums that look for 3+ stars and one of those keywords. (eg. 3+ stars and keyword = “venue”, 3+ stars and keyword = “during”). Smart albums are powerful because they are “dynamic”. If you change the keyword for an image from “during” to “venue”, the image will move from the “during” smart album to the “venue” smart album. If an image has both “venue” and “before”, it would show up in both smart albums. If you raise the star rating of an image to 3 or above, it will show up in the appropriate smart album. If you lower the star rating below 3 stars, it will disappear from all the smart albums.

To burn your DVD you will need to set up a Finder folder structure how you want the DVD to be organized. Once you apply all your adjustments to your images, rate them, create your albums by portion of the service, and add the requisite images to each album, you can select each album one at a time and export all the images therein to the appropriate folder you created in Finder. Once you have all your Finder folders populated, you can select the top-level folder and burn that to DVD. It will burn the entire folder hierarchy onto the DVD just as you have it laid out.

It is up you as to what size JPGs you provide the bride/groom. If you want them to have the full-size JPGs so they can create their own prints, that is what you would export to the Finder folders.

I would use Folders to organize your Library. I have a folder called TRAVEL, a folder called MUSIC, a folder called PORTRAITS, a folder called FAMILY, etc. Inside the folders are projects. Inside the projects are albums and smart albums.

I store only the master raw files. I can recreate exported JPGs at any time.

is there another way to easily and temporarily break the project down to bite sized chunks while rating etc. so I can come & go and go back to it instead of having 700+ shots staring at me all at once!

Before applying any ratings, you can create the albums for each portion of the event, place the corresponding images into their respective albums, and then select one album at a time and do your ratings there. After you have rated all the images in an album, you can change the view from “show all” to only show those below a certain rating. Then select all those images and delete them from the album. That will leave you with an album containing only images equal or above a given rating.