Online Photo Galleries – The New Wedding Present

Wedding presents, it seems, have just woken up in the 21st century. For years, we’ve all been doomed to give boring items from a hideous cook ware list held in a department store. This has seemed outmoded since roughly 1985, when people started to realise that the happy couple had already been living together for years, had a house and a full complement of cooking utensils and didn’t need any more. But, what to get them instead? How can a couple that doesn’t need anything be given stuff they’ll actually use? Online photo galleries, which we’ve been using for years without really thinking about their potential as gifts, have the answer.

It usually takes what the advertising industry likes to refer to as a “light bulb moment” before something completely brilliant hatches in public view. The online photo gallery as wedding gift idea is no exception. Shoebox 360, a UK based website that was initially created to store photos, much in the manner of all the other online photo hosting sites, had a rather brilliant idea – or rather its founders did. The idea was this. If, the good folk behind Shoebox 360 reasoned, all this social networking stuff is so popular, with all that file sharing and community creation going on: why not apply the same thing to a photo hosting site, and let users create communities as wedding gifts? And so the online photo galleries as wedding present ideas was born.

It takes a minute or two before the brilliance of this concept sinks in. A wedding is a wonderfully social occasion, where friends and family are united by a common knowledge of the happy couple. That’s a community in miniature – and a huge part of the reason why the wedding day is so special for the couple involved. By making an online photo community, where all guests can upload their snaps of the big day, comment on them and generally relive the experience, a couple is given the opportunity to relive that day whenever they choose – in the company of the people who were there. Online photo galleries of weddings become a living monument to the big day – a kind of ongoing celebration and reminiscence.

Shoebox 360 has made sure that its customers still get the benefits of traditional wedding photography – users owning an online wedding gallery can order high quality prints and albums whenever they like. The married couple are also made default administrators, which ensure that no snide, offensive or simply misguided comments turn up on the community pages to spoil everyone’s memories. It’s an iron clad concept, this – and a whole world away from the naff wedding gifts we’ve been giving for the last 20 years or so. 

Another great aspect of this idea is the way that it levels the playing field in terms of expense and embarrassment. Some people can’t afford expensive gifts. Investing in online photo galleries for the wedding means they can be sure they are giving a gift that will be truly appreciated – without anyone having to know how much they spent, or didn’t spend. Everyone’s a winner – particularly the happy couple.