What I was surprised at, is that the professionals took inordinate time to deliver albums, and in two cases the albums are still awaited (after 6 months).
That does seem to be excessive. I know one local pro who shoots about 80-90 beach weddings a year, and he gets most of his clients orders back to them within 30-90 days after they place their order. The 30-90 day delay is predicated upon how busy the lab he uses is; during busy times, the labs can be running at full capacity for quite a while. A lot of labs will work on the photos, cosmetic and exposure retouching, before they print them, as well.
One of the issues he deals with is people taking a long time to place their order, and then changing the order after it is sent to the lab. Since the clients often want this done at no charge, a prudent photographer and lab might drag their feet on getting the job started.
There are some exceptions to this. Last year, he shot a wedding where the father of the bride had advanced cancer, and he expedited his workflow on the project and asked the labs to do the same, and they got the photos back very quickly.
WM