Buying Better Wedding Gifts: The Wedding Book of Everyone

Looking for a personal, unique and fun wedding gift for someone you know? Then keep reading, because we're really excited about the wedding book of everyone...


Our society used to be very conservative in its views on marriage. There was the correct way to conduct courtships and pre-marital relationships and then there were the other (less forgiving) ways. 


Couples didn't live together until after they were married. For most women, the only way out of the family home was to take a husband. Smaller incomes, too, meant that there was but a slim chance for singletons to establish a home of their own without a partner. 

It sounds old fashioned, but if you're over the age of thirty, then it probably sounds like a scenario that's familiar to your family. Perhaps it wasn't your parents' situation, but it will most likely resemble the framework under which your grandparents and great-grandparents started married life. 

Day one of marriage, therefore, was year-zero. Setting up home was expensive, and a newly married couple often had to rely heavily on the charity of their extended families to furnish rooms. Additionally, the inevitable haul of wedding gifts was invaluable in helping couples through the first years of married life: tTea sets, kettles, microwaves, crock-pots, deep-fat fryers and, of course, toasters! Always with the toasters. 


Nowadays, things are different. The majority of couples are already living together when they get married, so there's no need to wait for Auntie Jane to buy a toaster or for Mrs Monroe to wrap up a hand blender. We live in a society of made-in-china now, and, if you want it, then you can buy it cheaply enough yourself.

So what can you buy for a newly married couple? Many now ask for money to fund the wedding, help towards a honeymoon or contribute to a mortgage. But that can be a problem in itself: how much is acceptable? How much can you afford to give? And money can be a crude and impersonal gesture on a day that's supposed to be anything but.

Well, we've found something that's both personal to the married couple and easy to create – the wedding book of everyone.

It comes from a company called the book of everyone, and they specialise in personalised hardback books that celebrate all sorts of occasions including, of course, weddings. We jumped at the chance to create our own wonderful gift for a fabulous couple getting married later this year.

The first thing that we really liked about this book was that it wasn't gender specific. Although it might refer to a bride and groom, there's a drop-down menu that tells the programme the gender of each individual, so you don't need to worry about having one side that's masculine and one that's feminine. This was key to what we were creating as we'll be celebrating the marriage of two grooms. That's the first thumbs up: it's gay and trans- friendly.

The book itself is separated into two halves with each individual section at either end meeting at the middle. Each page is printed to superb quality with the accompanying artwork and design as impeccably selected as the words printed over the top. Visually, we were all very impressed with the standard of each page. There's a unique, kooky kind of vibe going on that carries throughout the book. This isn't just your regular photobook or album. 

When you provide the programme with a couple's date of birth, you're filling the book with personalised information and random facts relevant to their lives. For groom number one, we found out the price of petrol in 1982, the UK number one single, and the science behind the stardust in his physiology. It told us how many people were born before him and how much DNA he shares with a passion fruit. In a way, this isn't just celebrating their marriage, it's celebrating their lives before marriage. There's sweet stuff, too: quotes about love, marriage and relationships, but there wasn't anything overly sentimental or mushy, which we really liked.

We think the book is best suited for younger couples, perhaps in the 16 - 45 age bracket. There's a real sense of fun with this book, and we know that after the intensity of planning a wedding, our friends are really going to get a kick out of reading about each other. 

Some of the pages allow for personalisation and that's what really makes this gift specific to the couple you're making it for. We added some photographs of friends and family to the one page, and my only real criticism is that more options for personal photographs would have been appreciated. 

We were very pleased to find how easy it was to create the book. The software on the website was just about as simple as it gets. There was nothing complicated or frustrating with the user experience, and we were very grateful for that.  Equally, creating the book really didn't take very long and this is coming from a group of people who can spend hours agonising over the layout of a photobook.

A few tips before you begin: make sure you have the wedding date of the couple you're making the book for; you'll also need their birth dates, too. 

Less than a week after we'd created our book, it arrived. The packaging was secure and sturdy, and, inside, the book itself was in a soft-touch laminated box. Delivery is free, too, which was a nice surprise. 

Overall, we were really impressed with the wedding book of everyone. It provides a fun, unique and personal gift experience that we're going to be very happy and proud to hand over to our friends. The quality finish and bespoke nature absolutely justifies the price and the speedy delivery means that this is one gift you won't have to plan months in advance. This isn't just a keepsake for a wedding, it's a keepsake of two lives that have become one. And we couldn't be happier with the final product. 

I'm sure our friends will be happy, too, that we're not gifting them something for our bottom drawer: a toaster, a kettle or a deep-fat fryer!

You can find out more about the book of everyone here, and you'll find the wedding book here