Guestbook Surprise
January 5th, 2007 @ 5:16 pm by Mrs. Bluebell
For our actual wedding, in June, we aren’t going to have a traditional guestbook because that wedding tradition is going to be overridden by a family tradition - everyone who gets married at the family house where we’re getting married has guests sign the house guestbook (we write the names of the couple & the date at the top of a new page). I am thrilled about this, because we have 2 house guestbooks going back to the 1800’s, and they list all the guests at a bunch of my different family members’ weddings - including my parents, brother and sister-in-law, and grandparents!
But…part of me still wants to have “our” guestbook that we can personalize, and then take home with us.
Enter - our Chinese banquet! 
It’s going to be held exactly four weeks after the wedding, and I was thinking we would just buy a pretty (but standard) guestbook along these lines:
[from China Bridal]
But then when I saw Mrs. OBX’s knottie bio that Mrs. BoP linked to this morning - it just clicked! I had seen guestbooks made from engagement photos before and always liked the idea, but we didn’t have professional engagement shots taken, and it seemed a little random to just use snapshots of us over the years, so I just dropped the idea. But Mrs. OBX used pictures from the Outer Banks, where her wedding took place, and I realized the photo book idea works just as well with ANY kind of pictures you want! (Yes, that might seem obvious, but just hadn’t occurred to me for some reason! :-P)
So our new plan (if there’s enough time in between?) is to get a photobook made up ASAP after the wedding so we can have a guestbook made of our actual wedding pictures!!! Some of our banquet guests will have been to the wedding, but they’ll still want to see pictures, right? 
And then a number of banquet guests won’t have gone, so it will be a good way to include them in the actual ceremony as well!
Does anyone know the turnaround time for photobooks? My photographer said she usually gets her pictures (all digital) to clients within a week of the wedding, and this won’t be our real wedding album, so we should be able to select a few photos to slap into the guestbook without toooo much deliberation!
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8 Responses to “Guestbook Surprise”
MyPublisher is ridiculously fast - three days after submitting it, I got it in the mail. I prefer Blurb’s variety of layouts but it wasn’t as quick. And plus, a guestbook requires blank space so MyPublisher sounds like the way to go.
I know nothing. But I DO know your family house traditions are fantastic! I am so jealous. 
I think the photobook would be great, though.
i used photoworks.com to create a wedding guest book and our honeymoon book…received them both about 8 days after ordering. good luck…i think it will be great
I used mypublisher and rush shipping and got mine in a couple days.
Ooooh, this is all so encouraging!!! Thanks everyone!!!!
Does it truly make sense to get a double [url=http://www.amherst-colleges.info] masters degree?[/url]
Is that really going to let me carve out my niche in both business & areas more relevant to what goes on here?
Mrs. Bluebell, New York
Age and Occupation in 07: 26, Finance Manager
Fiance's Age and Occupation: 27, Playing with the cat and/or Consulting
Engagement Date: December 25, 2005
Wedding Date: June 2007
Venue: Bride's family summer home in the Adirondacks
About Me: Trying to find the perfect balance between family tradition (marrying at the house everyone else in my family gets married at), making our's modern, interesting and different from everyone else in my family's, and incorporating some Chinese tradition for my Chinese fiance. I really have no idea what it's going to end up looking like!
Also, I picked Miss Bluebell for my name because I have blue eyes and I'm a loser like that.
I made a photobook with blurb.com and received mine in less than 2 weeks. There is always a rush shipping option too if you want to pay extra $$… (yea right, who does? hehe)