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How To Make A Hen Party Memory Book (Our Top Tips) - The Hen Planner

How To Make A Hen Party Memory Book (Our Top Tips)

What are hen party memory books they and how do we make them?

We get asked these questions all the time so today Jayne is giving you the complete low down and sharing some practical tips to help you get started and telling you exactly how to make a hen party memory book. 

What is a hen party book?

In short, it’s like a memory book or a ‘this is your life’ storybook. It’s full of the brides happiest memories, tells her story and includes messages from all the people who love her. It’s a gift she will treasure forever.

Ready to start? Grab a coffee or pour yourself a large glass of vino and begin at step one…

Step 1 – Choose the best format  

For crafty chicks, creating a beautiful handmade scrapbook bursting with photos and handwritten notes is ideal. Use something as simple as a guest book, photo album or scrapbook and add lots of personal touches along the way. 

If the only cutting and pasting you do is on your computer, then a digital photo book may be a better option for you. They come in all shapes and sizes and you can control the overall design and layout of the photos and text. You’ll find lots of options on Photobox or Snapfish.   

If you want something a little different, a personalised magazine could be the way to go. You can keep it simple and just create a front cover or go all out and design a magazine of her life story – if she loves glossy mags, she’ll adore it. Here is where you can get a glossy magazine style hen book

Top Tip: Whatever you do, don’t leave it to the last minute (like I did!). You’ll be relying on her family and friends to supply photos and messages so the sooner you ask for them, the better. You’ll be surprised how long it can take to gather everything together so make your life easier and give the girls a deadline date.

Step 2 - Source Photos, Messages & Memorabilia 

The next step is to start printing out your contents that will go into the scrapbook.  You can fill the pages with more than just photographs - be more adventurous and add sentimental messages you might have sent to each other - notes, text messages, facebook messages etc are all lovely little ways to add a more personal touch.  When I did this as Maid Of Honour, I found funny messages we used to write on each others Facebook walls! Some of them were cheesy but hilarious.  Remember it isn't about embarrassing her with this - make sure the content you add will either make her laugh or make her emotional (in a good way!).

Some other ideas of things to include have been listed below - don't forget to add the groom and their story into it too!

  1. Add lots of photos of the bride of course! Tell her life story… use flattering and funny pics but try to keep them clean or she’ll end up “accidentally” losing it and all your hard work will go to waste. If you can, add at least one photo of her with each hen so everyone feels included. The more pics you have the better and they’ll come in all formats so be ready to make prints, photocopies or scan in originals.

  2. Special messages from the hens, her family and her future husband.  Ask everyone for a note to the bride; it can be good wishes for the future, marriage advice, a poem, a funny story or whatever they like. If her mum or granny aren’t coming on the hen, make sure to still include a message from them and for a romantic touch, ask the groom to contribute too.

  3. For photo books, it’s a good idea to let everyone know roughly how long their messages should be. Some people will struggle to write one line and others will send you a book so be ready to do some editing! For handmade books simply leave space free and ask the hens to fill in their messages secretly at the hen.

Top Tip: We love SnapFish Retro Polaroids!  For the hen book I put together, I ordered these and you were able to add little captions on the bottom of each print, and I added pastel colour polaroid frames which looked super cute! They gave the book a real nostalgic feel!

Step 3 - Plan Your Layout

The next step to take is to plan your layout.  You can either go with a random layout where there's no timeline and each page she turns will be a suprise, or you can do it in a timeline format which is a little more time consuming but also works really well.  

Don't start sticking anything in there until your happy with the layout and how it flows! 

Step 4 - Stick It All Together!

Once your layout has been planned out and you're happy with it, the next thing to do is to stick all of your photos and content into the book and watch it come together!

It is a lovely idea to wrap it and put it in a nice gift bag, and go through it at the hen party with the rest of her hens!

Best of luck girls… we promise it’s worth the effort, she’ll cherish it long after the party ends.  

Tags: Gifts