Make an Online Map of Your Relationship Milestones
Your relationship has had a lot of firsts. Of course, there’s your first meeting, first date, and first kiss. Depending on how long you’ve been together, you may also have marriage or even child-related milestones to celebrate.
Remembering these milestones is the idea behind those maps of your relationship that make for popular gifts around Valentine’s Day. And while those certainly are thoughtful tokens to hang on the wall, we’re in the digital age.
We want to show you how to make an online map of your milestones, which starts by jotting down the most important events of your relationship.
Jot Down the Important Events of Your Relationship
You certainly have an idea of the important milestones in your relationship—you were there, after all. But have you ever written them down?
More than just for posterity’s sake, a spreadsheet of the most important events throughout your years together will help you make your map. So go ahead and note your relationship milestones in a column within Excel or Google Sheets.
Some ideas to consider:
- Your first meeting
- First date
- First “I love you”
- Engagement
- Marriage
You might also wish to add when you first moved in together, your first vacation, or even your first fight (which may have occurred on the same day as one of the prior two events), among other events specific to your relationship.
But beyond noting the type of milestone, there are a few more details you’ll want to include.
Add Locations & Dates
In addition to writing down your milestones, you need to note a few more things about these events: locations and dates.
Each of your relationship’s moments occurred somewhere. If it’s a common enough location, such as a landmark (i.e. Library Quad, California State University, Sacramento, CA), you can include that in its own column, along with city, state, and optionally country all in separate columns. The same goes for specific locations, like business names (i.e. or Grumpy Mule Coffee, Sacramento, CA).
Beyond that, you’ll want to include addresses (i.e. 5901 Newman Ct)—though locations aren’t the only additional data you should include.
It’s equally as useful to note the date of each event, though you’ll want to include each part in its own column (i.e. Day, Month, Year). Once that’s done, we can move on to the final part: making the map!
Map Your Milestones
View Your Relationship Milestones in a full screen map
With your milestones and their details collected, it’s time to map them. There are plenty of methods for map making on the web, including ArcGIS and the Google Maps API. But for an option that doesn’t require you to purchase expensive software (as with ArcGIS) or have any programming knowledge (Google Maps API), our web-based mapping tool might just be your best bet. That’s because all you’ll need to know how to do is copy and paste.
So let’s jump into it:
- Open your spreadsheet of relationship milestones
- Select (Ctrl+A or Cmd+A) and copy (Ctrl+C or Cmd+C) your data
- Open your web browser and navigate to batchgeo.com
- Click on the location data box with the example data in it, then paste (Ctrl+V or Cmd+V) your own data
- Check to make sure you have the proper location data columns available by clicking “Validate and Set Options”
- Select the proper location column from each drop-down
- Click “Make Map” and watch as the geocoder performs its process
From there, you can choose your map’s base styles, along with the marker shapes, colors, and labels. Once you’re happy with your map, send the link to the one you love most.
