Custom Music Video

Every photograph apparently required a full explanation. We eventually gave up trying to keep him quiet and just enjoyed the stories.

I found a preschool photo of my daughter wearing a backpack that looked almost as big as she was and knew immediately that it had to be the opening image. From there, we used pictures from elementary school, sports, family trips, high school and eventually college. The custom graduation song already talked about growing up and finding her direction, so the photos made that progression much more visible. She laughed at the early pictures, protested several middle-school choices, and became emotional when the college years appeared. The final photograph was taken in her cap and gown. Her younger brother, who normally has commentary for everything, was suspiciously quiet by then too.

The first time we watched our anniversary video, my wife and I were focused on the song and emotional parts. The second time we kept pausing to look at old photos and remember where they were taken. I didn't expect a four-minute video to generate an hour of conversation.

My brother's birthday video included childhood pictures our mother had carefully preserved for future blackmail. He laughed harder at those than anything else.

My parents have boxes of photographs that almost nobody looks through anymore. For their 40th anniversary, my sister and I quietly borrowed several albums and scanned pictures from dating, their wedding, our childhood, vacations, graduations and eventually the grandchildren. Seeing those images arranged around their custom song was completely different from flipping through an album. The story moved forward while the pictures did the same. Dad kept identifying old cars and houses, while Mom was much more interested in everyone's clothes and hairstyles. When pictures of their parents appeared, both of them became quiet. By the end, our kids were asking questions about relatives they'd only heard about before. It unexpectedly became a little family-history lesson.

My best friend's birthday video used photos going all the way back to high school. She wanted the file on her phone before everyone had even gone home.

Our children helped choose photos for my wife's birthday video, which turned out to be half the fun. Naturally, they selected pictures I never would have chosen—Mom making ridiculous faces, asleep on the couch, covered in flour while baking, and holding them when they were babies. Those pictures ended up making the video much more personal than if I'd selected only the perfect family portraits. The custom song already included little everyday details about her, so the informal photos matched it beautifully. She laughed when she realized the kids had been involved and cried when the older baby pictures appeared. At the end, our youngest immediately announced which photographs had been his choices, ruining any remaining mystery.

We made the video for my sister's wedding and included photos from when she was little, family vacations, pictures of the couple dating and their engagement. She laughed through the childhood section and got very quiet once the story reached the two of them together. It was a beautiful way to connect her old family memories with the new chapter.

Not because he disliked it—because every old photograph reminded him of another story. We had to watch his retirement video twice to actually hear the whole song.

I started with photos from when my husband and I were dating and worked forward through our wedding, first house, children, vacations, graduations and eventually our first grandchild. Some of the older pictures had to be scanned from actual photo albums, which made the final video even more fun because my husband hadn't seen several of them in years. The images followed the story in our custom anniversary song instead of just appearing randomly. When the lyrics moved into parenthood, suddenly there were pictures of us holding babies. When it reached traveling together, our vacation photos appeared. We watched it with our children, who laughed hardest at how young we looked in the beginning. I thought thirty years would be impossible to summarize, but somehow those few minutes captured the feeling of it.