I don’t know many people who are crazy enough to travel internationally with their babies. Okay, I know a few. With the birth of our second child, we will have applied for 6 child passports by the time we are finished between the two of them. We made our share of mistakes, and thankfully were able to remedy most of them before we had to repay and resubmit. But there are 3 things you should do for you or your child’s passport.
- Walk all your paperwork into a US passport walk-in facility. We did this on both occasions for our daughters and it took a total of 15 mins to get everything looked at, processed, and submitted. That way you don’t have to wait for someone to tell you that you didn’t submit everything you need. And if they need another copy, they do it in office and you save on postage.
- This tip comes from another passport-pro friend. Use www.IDphoto4u.com to get passport photos. I went to Walgreens twice for passport photos. Both times I got horrible, horrible photos. They “touch them up” and the photos clearly are edited and tampered with. In my youngest daughter’s case, her head looked like a hot air balloon with her shoulders as the basket. It was horrendous. I ended up declining to purchase the photos after waiting for an hour, because I didn’t want the passport application to be declined. What I did instead was take a photo and upload it to www.IDphoto4u.com. It gives you the qualifications you need as well as helps you make sure that the photo will be approved before you submit the photo. Once you submit it on their website, you will get a PNG to download and you can print out four 2×2 photos on a 4×6 and cut them. Walgreens charges $15 for two 2x2s. Huge waste of money. Never doing that again considering I had to have 6 pictures for all the passports I was doing. There are tons of resources online to use for photos. What a time to be alive.
- Make sure you have plenty of original copies of your or your child’s birth certificate, a state-issued ID, and check/cash/debit to pay the fees.
- Lastly, check my post on Traveling Internationally with a Baby for tips on traveling with a one-year old. And then live in fear until the trip is done. Just kidding. Mostly.
