Be Our Guest…And Sign This Book!
May 7th, 2007 @ 4:36 pm by Mrs. Snow Pea
Thanks to Miss Apple and reader Iris; they gave me the idea of doing a photo guestbook. Guests can simply sign and write a message on any page, as they would in a yearbook. Polaroid guest books are great, but the space at our reception lobby is limited. (So are the pretty cherry blossom trees with hanging notes.) However, there was still the dilemma of “What am I gonna do with this afterwards?” The photo guestbook will act as a wedding keepsake, memory book and photo album in one.
Was I cute or what?
The photos I am including (besides the usual baby photos) are photos from college where we met, trips to Europe, spring break with our friends, our engagement party, Grandma’s old wedding photos, and eventually, my bridal shower and bachelorette party photos.
One thing in particular that I really enjoyed about my MOH’s wedding slideshow was that she included pictures of her friends in Europe and med school. That adds a personal touch, and guests from different periods of your lives can see different aspects of the bride and groom’s lives.
The picture above is from Shutterfly, but there are also Snapfish and Kodak. If you take advantage of the Mother’s Day sale, it’s 20% off. My personal favorite is Blurb. I am saving Blurb for our parent albums and honeymoon photos. I love love love their layouts!
What photobook service are you using?
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20 Responses to “Be Our Guest…And Sign This Book!”
Love the guestbook! Perhaps I’m a little biased - I made one for myself (see my blog for a look-see). I only used our engagement pics, and now I am kinda wishing that I including childhood photos etc. However, it has already been kind of a pain to get a wedding picture of my fianc©’s grandparents for our wed site - I couldn’t imagine asking them to send us pics of us when we were little (we live across the country from our family and all of these special pictures. Looks great though!
Yeah! I too thought about doing this awhile back but still couldn’t seem to narrow down our many guestbook options….-)
Question: Has anyone used MyPublisher or IPhoto? I’ve used both and was so disappointed with Apple’s Photobook. The print quality was poor and the “classic” book isn’t even a hardcover book. Very thin and flimsy.
I also created a book from MyPublisher and it was much better but not what it I had expected. The images were a little washed out on print but overall was good. And it can’t be the camera quality because these images were either from our photographer (F8Studio) or my camera (Nikon D80).
How does blurb compare to MyPublisher and IPhoto? Now that we”ve got 3 more weeks until the wedding, I’m seriously considering on doing a photo guestbook too!
Any help ?
I used MyPublisher for our guest book and was very happy with the quality. I also really liked the variety of layout options.
I’ve used Photoworks.com and their product is fantastic! There are a lot of different layout and theme options, not as much as Shutterfly, but I’m indecisive so a little less options was better for me.
You can even put multilple photos on the front and back covers. The quality was also great.
I used mypublisher to do something similar. Instead of too many photos of us, I incorporated photos of our first date restaurant, the quaint streets of the West Village (NYC) which we now call home and also photos of our birthplaces as well as where we grew up. I thought this was a nice gesture to pay tribute to our families as they go through it and see familiar places they also once called home (Italy & Hong Kong).
I didn’t like that mypublisher only has black, white, or grey for the backgrounds. I love the color in this one!
Iris-I asked Mr. Snow Pea about this because he’s the Photoshop expert with photos. He said he just scans it at 200 dpi. Then he adjusts the “curves” and enhances the dark shades to be darker and the light shades to be lighter. This clears up the “fuzziness” in old photos. As for the photo of me up there; I actually took a picture with my digital camera OF the picture for quicky uploading viewing purposes.
I heard mixed reviews of My Publisher as well. Overall most brides thought it was good/great but still not what they expected. Still though it’s good enough and does the job. I am personally going with the Shutterfly album because it’s cheap and people are signing on it anyway so no need for super high quality which may even get in the way of the pen ink. I am not concerned with colored pages or fancy layouts either because again, people are signing the pages and I’d rather the message be more visible.
Hami-Thanks for sharing your album. It looks great!
I think Blurb is da bomb!
d read mixed reviews about mypublisher but was very pleased with the quslity of the books I ordered.
i like blurb because of the complete hardcover, vs. the window hardcover of mypublisher.
Miss Snow Pea, thanks for the tips! Ha, taking a picture OF a picture is a clever work-around!
Thanks for the lovely idea! I’m having a european destination wedding. As you can imagine, pulling off a photo montage or some sort of slideshow would be quite difficult. I think this is the perfect alternative to showcase your photo memories with friends and family.
I did engagement pictures in our guestbook. We went through mypublisher and the quality of the photos wasn’t as great as I was hoping for, but so far I’m without another book to compare it to. The mypublisher pages are glossy which limits what pens you can use without smudging.
your so right Melissa, I’ve been trying to find some non smudge pens for high gloss books. I stopped by Office Max yesterday and purchased a few pens that were non smudge but still smudged when i tried them on high gloss paper.
So far, the best ones that i found were the pens you wrote on cd-r. They don’t smudge at all.
I used PhotoWorks for a picture book that I gave to my BF for our dating anniversary. I think the quality is great and there is a lot of options to choose from. Good luck and have fun with it !
Great wqaqatulic site and book, good work!
Hellos
Mrs. Snow Pea, New York
Age and Occupation: 26, Architectural Engineer and student
Fiance's Age and Occupation: 26, Web Designer
Engagement Date: July 4, 2005
Wedding Date: August 18, 2007
About Me: I am a DIY gal. From cooking, home improvements to wedding. Mr. Snow Pea and I met in college, and since then we've been like peas and carrots! Love cooking, traveling, and fishing.
I am happy for you, using this idea! I will have to do mine with post-wedding photos.
Your baby photos are cute… What’s your trick to uploading old photos (pre-digital), to keep them crisp and sharp? Or were you limited to using small sizes to preserve resolution?