Occasion
Make a birthday website for your girlfriend
A birthday website for your girlfriend is the gift she can flip through. It is a magazine with her on the cover: her name, her best photo, and a letter from you inside. It does not replace the present. It is the wrapping that makes the day feel planned.
The Magazine template gives you about ten pages: a cover, your letter, your story, nine reasons that flip over, photo pages, your songs on a spinning vinyl and a back cover. You choose Cherry, Noir or Blush, add up to twenty photos, and send one link.
Put her on the cover
The cover is the first thing she sees, so make it about her. Her name goes across it with a photo. Choose one where she is laughing at something outside the frame, not one where she is posing, and pick a style to suit her: Cherry for the classic romantic, Blush for soft and sweet, Noir for the girlfriend who would roll her eyes at pink. If you are unsure, the preview updates as you switch, so try all three on her photo and keep the one that looks like her. A good cover does a lot of the work before she turns a single page.
Nine reasons, one on every heart
The reasons page shows nine hearts, and each one flips over to show a reason. This is where a birthday page gets personal, so keep them specific and a little recent: the way she handled a bad week, the voice she does when she is reading, the thing she does with the leftovers. Skip 'you are kind' and 'you are beautiful'; she knows. A good reason is something only you would have noticed. Mix a couple of funny ones among the sincere ones, so that turning the hearts over feels like a game and not an exam.
Photos: one chapter at a time
You can add up to twenty photos, and they do not all sit on one page. Some go on a photobooth strip, some on film strips, and one earns a full page with a big line written across it. Use that line for the joke or the sentence she will screenshot: 'Twenty-eight and still the best company I know'. If you have few photos of the two of you, that is fine. Use a few of her, a few of places you have been together, and one of something only she would understand. The words you put around them are what stop it being a gallery.
The letter: about the year she just had
A birthday letter is about the person turning a year older, not about the relationship. Say what you watched her do this year. Say one thing she should be prouder of than she is. Say what you want for her next year, which is different from what you want for the two of you. Keep it to 150 to 250 words, in short paragraphs, so it reads well on a phone. The letter gets its own page. Add your songs too, each with a title and a Spotify link if you have one, and the page plays them on a spinning vinyl.
Send it first, and leave room for her reply
Text the link just after midnight, or before she wakes up, so it is the first message of her birthday. You get an email the moment she opens it. The magazine ends with a reply box, so she has somewhere to put her reaction other than a two-word text, and you get another email when she writes back. Preview it on your own phone first; it is free and only you can see it. If you are not together on the day, it is the nearest thing to being in the room.
Questions
Related pages
Start with The Magazine
Starts as The Magazine, filled in for you. Add your photos and words, preview it for free.
Start with this template