1 January 1970
All photo albums are filled with love, but the photo book that Farrah Almira made literally had us crying happy tears when she shared the story with us. The photo book, that the whole family helped put together, is a book filled with 50 years of true love. They made it as a gift for her parents-in-law’s 50th wedding anniversary – and as you can imagine – it was a success.
The idea to make a photo book for their anniversary just popped up. “We thought it would be nice to give them a photo book that captures their journey, from the beginning of their marriage until now,” says Farrah. She continues, “We organized the photo book into five chapters, each representing a decade of their marriage and included a small summary of the major events that happened during that decade.”
When the family was discussing how to go about making a photo book, Farrah figured the easiest way was to have a clear structure and storyline, to avoid everyone randomly uploading pictures. So that’s how they came up with adding five chapters. The four sons each wrote one of the short summaries (except Farrah’s husband who wrote two since he was assigned to be in charge of the gift). Farrah points out that “although a picture is worth a thousand words, the short introduction that we added to every chapter gives even more romance to the whole thing.”
Everything didn’t go as easy as it sounds though. One of the trickiest things was to find pictures from 50 years ago “...and be sneaky about it because we didn’t want the parents to find out!” adds Farrah. Farrah and her family used the collaboration function to save time and effort, that way everyone could add their photos and text themselves at their own pace.
They ordered the photo book just in time for the family trip to celebrate the anniversary, but Farrah accidentally put the wrong zip code! “Luckily the customer care team was very responsive and helpful along the process (a special shout-out to Johan!). So, we managed to get the book delivered to a location nearby our holiday destination, so we could give it to my parents-in-law,” says Farrah.
“They absolutely loved it!” says Farrah. Her parents-in-law proudly showed the book to all their grandkids, telling them about the stories behind the pictures. And now, the book is displayed in their living room so that they can show it off to all their visitors. And now Farrah is working on her next Once Upon book, a book about the family trip they made, which they’re planning to give to her parents-in-laws as a Christmas present!
1
Such a huge advantage to be able to do this! Saved everyone lots of time and efforts.
2
Add a short story to make it more interesting.
3
Give yourself and the collaborators enough time to populate the images, write the story and to edit.
4
For example, don’t add too many pictures on one spread (or at least that’s how I personally like it!)
5
Make sure you put in the right delivery address…