Home » Unique Birthday Gift Ideas for Your Special Someone

In the world of celebrations, the birthday party is the perfect opportunity to honor your favorite people. Every year, you get the chance to say “Happy birthday!” once again and remind them how much they mean to you. 

However, for people who mean the most to you—like family and close friends—coming up with new, meaningful birthday gift ideas can be a challenge. The best birthday gift ideas are personal and often humorous, but still sentimental enough to trigger happy tears. How do you come up with a unique birthday gift that does all that?

A happy birthday video montage can be the perfect choice!

A Happy Birthday Video Montage Takes the Cake

A video montage is a simple but meaningful birthday gift. Imagine pulling together your birthday girl or birthday boy’s family and close friends to record personal wishes and creating a video that is equal parts celebration, love, humor, and caring.

Choose a single, open-ended question for each participant to answer on video. You could ask, “What do you admire most about Naima?” or “What is your favorite memory of Charles?”

Ask each participant to keep their answers about one minute in length so the video isn’t too long. Let them know you’re looking for funny and sentimental stories they know will mean a lot to your recipient.

Already inspired? Skip to see how easy it is to make a birthday video.

Happy Birthday Video Celebration

  1. Birthday Food and Drinks
  2. Happy Hobby Day
  3. We Celebrate You

Perhaps the best thing about a happy birthday video montage is it allows long-distance family and friends to join the celebration. By combining your tribute video with an in-person theme, you can create a memorable birthday experience. As the birthday video maker, the sky’s the limit for creative ideas. We’ve compiled some of our favorite unique birthday gift ideas here for combining your video keepsake gift with an in-person celebration with guests near and far!

Idea #1: Birthday Food and Drinks

We all love to gather together for brunch or dinner or wine together, sharing stories, spending time with the people we love. While it may not be possible to gather everyone in one spot, you can use video to share the stories and even the food and drinks. 

For example, you can offer a baking-themed party and declare it “Annie’s Sweet Birthday Week.” Have each video participant shoot their video in their kitchen, note what’s baking, and send that baked good to the video recipient. You can just imagine how touching a birthday video montage of favorite memories is when paired with days of home-baked goods arriving in the mail.

Idea #2: Happy Hobby Day

Is your birthday person known for their hobbies? Maybe they’re a musician, or a golfer, or make arts and crafts. Personalize this year’s celebration to the recipient’s passion. Say Kelly is an avid craftsperson known for gifting creations to friends and family. Take advantage of the popular social meme where people attempt creative feats and post their successes and, more humorously, their failures for all to enjoy. 

Imagine a video montage of each participant:

  1. Answering the question, “What’s your favorite craft Kelly made and why?”
  2. Showing their craft reference, “I found this frog cake on Pinterest and made it for Kelly’s birthday.”
  3. Showing the result “…but my frog looks more like a hobbit house! Kelly, the next time I make a fondant animal, I’m calling you first for tips.”

Idea #3: We Celebrate You

No need for a theme other than a big festive celebration? This idea is definitely for you! Ask each video participant to do two things:

  1. Dress in something festive when they record their video.
  2. End their video with a “happy birthday” and throw confetti or blow a noisemaker. 

Have your video made into an LCD video card. Deliver the video card in a box full of confetti, noisemakers, happy birthday necklaces, tiaras, and more to the birthday honoree. Have everyone at the in-person gathering wear and use the party box contents when screening the tribute video at the party. At the video end, everyone throws streamers, toots noisemakers, and sings “Happy Birthday.”

Simple and Unique Birthday Gift

At Tribute, our video process makes video montage creation quick and easy:

  1. Invite friends.

    We send the invitations with all the information your friends and family need to participate.

  2. Collect videos.

    We provide the prompt for your participants to make a video and upload it.

  3. Compile the video.

    We make it easy for you to drag and drop the collected videos into any order you like and then share the final Tribute video.

  4. Get premium service (optional).

    Let one of our concierge editors manage the project and compile your final Tribute video.


The best birthday gift ideas are a mix of in-the-moment and lifetime-of-memories celebration. When you give your favorite person a video Tribute, you can bring their favorite people together from near and far, share personal sentiments, and create a keepsake they can watch for many years to come.

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