Yup, I’m one of those people. I paid perfectly good money for a great wedding photographer (thanks Kimberly Mufferi!), adding a pretty hefty amount to my already tight wedding budget, and once I got the pictures on CD — yes, it was so long ago, they were on CD! — I just proceeded to put it somewhere between my college books and some old photo albums on a random bookshelf. Sure, it didn’t help that I had our first baby just six months after our nuptials. Still, I know I should have done something with the pics — printed them, sent them to people in email attachments, anything!
As my 10th anniversary approaches, the matter of our wedding pictures has been heavily on my mind. That’s why I was thrilled to discover Mixbook.com, an online photo service that lets you upload, plan, design, and print gorgeous photo books and other photography keepsakes. The site has so many design ideas, themes, gift ideas — everything carefully put together and curated. Building a beautiful and professional looking photo book was so much easier than I ever imagined (which probably explains why I put it off for so long).
The whole process, no joke, took maybe a couple of hours. If you have more wedding pics it may take longer, but here’s how my Mixbook journey went down:
I had to look for my ancient technology ...
So I located the CDs and uploaded them to an external drive. Mind you, I had to use my old 2007 iMac because my new one doesn’t even have a CD port. Anyway, once I had all the pics uploaded to my computer, I went through Mixbook’s flawless library of designs.
I picked a theme.
That was one of the hardest parts (besides seeing myself almost 10 years and 40 pounds ago!). Mixbook has SO MANY perfect designs, it was hard to pick just one. Seriously, there are almost 500 options for wedding photo books, and that's not to mention the options Mixbook has for wedding guest books, travel photo books, photo books for kids and babies' pictures, holiday themed books — basically so many design options that it will be easy to find one that speaks to you.
OK, now for the fun part …
I went through my almost 1,000 wedding pictures on my computer (so fun, blah) and decided which ones to upload to my workspace on Mixbook. This part was pretty seamless, if a little time-consuming. Not the site’s fault, though: Uploading pics to Mixbook was just a matter of dragging and dropping. The workspace was even arranged automatically in chronological order. That rocked. Actually, Mixbook gives you the option of just uploading all the pics into the book of your choice automatically, in chrono order. That would be awesome if you curate your pictures and drop only the ones you want into the Mixbook workspace. My pics were not curated. I must have dragged over 500 pictures to work with.
I let out my inner graphic designer.
So I began to drop pictures into the empty picture spots in my Project workspace. So, so easy. The options to move, zoom in and out, swap out pics, and resize them were all so user friendly and intuitive, it was a breeze. It helps too that the book is fully designed with stickers and very tasteful flourishes that give it life. I must have swapped out a few of the stickers and erased a few things that felt like they were overwhelming once my pictures were in, but all in all, the process was easy and the result was amazing.
I made sure to look through my book before sending to print.
Once I settled on one of the design themes, I went through all the pages to make sure the overall effect would look good with the style of my wedding pictures. My pics were pretty bright and many had lots of movement, so the gold and black of the Golden Wedding theme I thought would be a great complement. I spotted one huge boo-boo right before I hit the order button — thankfully my beautiful photo book wasn't ruined with the incorrect names on one of the first pages. Oops.
The reactions have been very positive.
My kids certainly are getting a kick out of seeing "old" pictures of their parents. The fact that they can appreciate our union now that they're a little older has actually made the waiting worth it.
The final result is so pretty -- it's coffee table worthy!
If you’re like me, a procrastinator to the max, or just plum out of gift ideas, using your pictures –whether from your wedding, anniversary, or just special times — to create really unique and personalized presents is a great strategy. It’s pretty easy once you have all the pics chosen, and you’ll get major brownie points for doing something personal and beautiful. In fact … I think this Mixbook will be my hubby’s Valentine’s Day gift this year!
