How to Gather 50 Years of Photos From the Whole Family for an Anniversary Slideshow

An anniversary slideshow is the one the children make. Your parents have been married 25 or 50 years, there is a dinner or a party, and somebody decides the room should see the wedding photos and everything since. That somebody is usually you.

The difficulty is that fifty years of photos are spread across two families and three formats. The wedding is prints and maybe slides in a box at their house. The middle decades are in albums and in your aunts' albums. The last fifteen years are on a dozen phones, half of them your siblings' and cousins'. This guide is about getting all of it into one place, in time to build something worth watching.

Three weeks is comfortable, a week is enough

If the dinner is next weekend, start tonight: the slideshow plays as soon as there are photos in it, and most relatives send theirs within a day or two of the link. With more time, this is the plan:

• Three weeks before: ask both sides. Your siblings, both sets of aunts and uncles, the cousins, and the friends who were at the wedding. Say what it is for and give them one place to put photos and a date.
• Two weeks before: the albums and the box. Photograph the wedding prints and the albums at your parents' house, and your own by year. This is the week other people's photos start to arrive.
• One week before: build and check. Put it together, choose the music, watch it on a television. Then stop; the last week is for the party.

The wedding photos are almost always at your parents' house. If the party is a surprise, that visit is the one thing in the plan you have to be clever about.

Where fifty years of photos are

Make a list before you ask, because a specific ask gets a photo and "send me anything" gets a promise.

1. The wedding box at their house. Prints, an album, sometimes slides, sometimes a proof book from the photographer. This is the section the room has never seen, and the reason to start early.
2. Their own siblings. Your aunts and uncles have the years before you, and often the wedding from a different angle.
3. Your siblings and cousins. Everyone has a different slice: the Christmases, the beach, the graduations, the first grandchild.
4. The friends who were there. The best man, the maid of honor, the couple they went on holiday with for thirty years. One photo each, and they are the ones your family does not have.
5. Your own phone, by year. The last fifteen years are easy; scroll year by year and pull the ones with both of them in the frame.
6. The grandchildren. They have the recent years and the photos that will get the biggest reaction.

Prints, slides, and the box

For prints, photograph them with your phone in daylight, flat, filling the frame, holding the phone level. Our guide to photographing old photos with your phone covers glare and angles, and the result is more than good enough for a screen.

Slides are the one format that stops people. Hold each slide up to a bright window, or lay it on a phone or tablet showing a plain white screen, and photograph it from a few inches away with the camera focused on the slide. It will not be a perfect scan, but on a television it reads, and the wedding in slide film has a warmth nothing else does. If the box has hundreds, a local print shop scans slides and prints by the box in a day or two, and for a 50th that is money well spent.

One link for both families

The reason anniversary photos get lost is that they arrive from two families in twelve different ways. Send one link instead. On Embrance you make a family link for the slideshow and text it to everyone at once, both sides. Anyone who opens it adds photos straight from their phone, with no account and no app, and the photos land in the slideshow as they come in. You watch it fill up instead of chasing it.

The message that works is short and has a date: "Making a slideshow for Mom and Dad's 50th. If you have any photos of them from any year, add them here by the 20th. It is a surprise." A link and a deadline get answered. "Send me whatever you have" does not.

How many, and in what order

50 to 90 photos runs four to six minutes at a few seconds each, which a seated room at a dinner watches through. Spend more of those photos on the wedding and the early years than on last summer. The recent years are on everyone's phone already; the wedding is what the room came to see.

Open with the wedding. Then run the years: the first home, the children small, the children grown, the grandchildren. End on a recent photo of the two of them together, so the last thing on the screen is the couple in the room. If either of them has photos from before they met, a short section at the very start is a lovely surprise.

Music

One or two songs for four to six minutes; three if it runs longer. The first dance, if anyone remembers it, is the one. Otherwise a song from the year they married for the early decades and a warm recent one for the last. Our list of anniversary slideshow songs is sorted by the year they married, and on Embrance you can bring the actual recording as an MP3 or M4A and it plays under the photos.

One practical note: if you plan to post the finished video afterward for the relatives who could not come, a popular song can be muted on Facebook or Instagram. That does not affect the party, only the online copy.

Playing it at the party

A shareable link opens the slideshow on any smart TV's browser or on a phone. If the venue has a screen, download the finished MP4 and play it from a laptop over HDMI or from a USB stick. Test on the actual screen the day before, with the sound on, and decide who presses play.

Common questions

How many photos should a 50th anniversary slideshow have?

50 to 90 photos, which runs four to six minutes at a few seconds each: enough for five decades, two families and the grandchildren, and short enough that a seated room watches it through. Spend more of the photos on the wedding and the early years than on last summer; those are the ones nobody has seen.

How do I get photos from both sides of the family?

Send one link to everyone: your siblings, both sets of aunts and uncles, the cousins, the friends who were at the wedding. On Embrance you make a family link for the slideshow and anyone who opens it adds photos from their phone, with no account. The photos land in the slideshow as they arrive, so nothing is lost in a group text.

How do I get the wedding photos into a slideshow when they are prints or slides?

Photograph the prints with your phone, flat in daylight, filling the frame. For slides, hold each one up to a bright window or a white phone screen and photograph it from a few inches away; it is not perfect, but on a TV it reads. A local print shop will scan a box of either in a day if there are hundreds.

When should I start collecting photos for an anniversary slideshow?

A week is enough if that is what you have: the slideshow plays as soon as there are photos in it, and most relatives send theirs within a day or two of the link. Three weeks is comfortable: ask both families in the first, photograph the albums and slides in the second, build and check in the third. The wedding photos usually live at your parents' house, so plan that visit around whether the party is a surprise.

What order should an anniversary slideshow go in?

Open with the wedding, then run the years: the first home, the children small, the children grown, the grandchildren, and end with a recent photo of the two of them together. If one of them has photos from before they met, a short "before" section at the start is a lovely surprise for the room.

How do I play the slideshow at the anniversary party?

On the TV or the venue's screen. A shareable link opens it on any smart TV's browser or on a phone, and a downloaded MP4 plays from a laptop over HDMI or a USB stick. Test on the actual screen the day before, with the sound on.

If you would rather hand the photos over and have it made, someone can make it for you.