Anniversary Week – Day 1

{this is part of a series I wrote for write.click.scrapbook. You can find the full post here}

Hello! Our theme for the week is Anniversaries. I figured this would be a fitting theme for this week, given that write.click.scrapbook’s 5th anniversary is coming up, and it happens to be my wedding anniversary as well. 🙂

Throughout the week we’ll be talking about documenting anniversaries and relationships, how to scrap milestones, anniversary cards, mini albums, and ideas for anniversary gifts.

Documenting Anniversaries

Here are a few tips for your anniversary pages: focus on the photograph, feature the numbers, and tell a story.

Focus on the Photograph

This tip is simple enough: just let the photo speak. Here is my Second Anniversary page.

And here is our Third Anniversary.

Feature the Numbers

I also love to feature the anniversary number on my pages.

Can you spot the number 5 on my Fifth Anniversary page?

The numbers on my Sixth Anniversary page aren’t as subtle. 🙂

Tell A Story

Another tip is to add some journaling about your couple, or about what you did on your anniversary. For my Fourth Anniversary page, I wrote a couple sentences to document how we celebrated it.

Documenting Relationships

All these tips work not just for anniversary pages, but also to document relationships in a broader sense.

A Word About Taking Photos…

As you may have noted, all my anniversary pages feature photographs of my husband and me. But I don’t think I am the only one with a husband who hates being in photos.. am I? So I wanted to share a few tips on how to get those photos taken.

  1. Choose your camera wisely. My husband has a particular aversion to my D-SLR, while he is much more ready to take iPhone pictures. So I pick my battles and only insist on using the big camera when I feel it’s worth it.
  2. Be prepared. Whenever I want a photo with my D-SLR, I know I need to plan in advance, set up the tripod, etc. and have everything ready to snap quickly.
  3. Keep it light. Don’t expect to take 100 shots, one or two good ones will suffice.
  4. Set the mood. The best way to get some good pictures with my husband is to make him laugh. I remember a particularly tough photo session – I had my tripod set up, the cherry trees were in bloom, but he was in a lousy mood. But while I was taking a couple shots of him alone, he started taking a selfie, and I took a photo of him taking a selfie, and that made us laugh. After that, everything went smoothly and I got some great shots (check out my Sixth Anniversary page above for proof).
  5. Share/Motivate. Show him the previous photos you took and how you documented them, and perhaps he will be moved to take new photos. (Sadly, this one doesn’t work at all with my husband..)
  6. Bribe. If your husband is anything like mine, he’ll be open to posing for a few shots in exchange of something he wants – in our case, it’s usually a nice meal ;).

I hope you enjoyed these tips and the inspiration! Tomorrow we will be talking about how to scrap milestones!

Leave a Reply