Wedding Blog
Since all the major wedding decisions have been made, I am now left with all the details. Perhaps I’m not alone when I say that it can be really overwhelming!
One of my (many!) tasks for this week is to figure out what we want to do for the guest book. While I like a lot of the stylish ideas I’ve seen in magazines and blogs of notes hung on trees and the like, I’m not sure it’s the right fit for us. I want to have something that’s compact and bound together simply because I’m afraid I’d lose an unattached note! At the same time, I don’t want a boring display that people merely sign their names to. At my shower, people wrote long notes, but I think that’s because they got there before I arrived, so they had time to do so.
An idea I liked was the Guestbook Store. Basically, rather than having a book filled with blank pages, each page has different questions to guide guests through. I like this idea a lot, but perhaps it’s a bit too involved? I’m a bit concerned that it will create too much of a bottle neck…What do you guys think? Here are some sample pages:
Another thought I had was to make a photo book that guests can sign in. But, since we decided to forgo an engagement shoot, I’m not sure what pictures we’ll use. And since the clock is ticking, do I have time to assemble one??
As a guest (or host!), what is your favorite guest book you’ve seen?? Where did you get your guest book?
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Since we are having a destination wedding, we designed postcards of our destination using publisher (powerpoint would work fine). On the back, we put things like “Advice for the newlyweds” and “What was your favorite part of the weekend” with blank space following for writing. Then, we self addressed them and stamped them. Our guests will mail them from our location and we should get them after we get home. We look forward to reading them, and they seemed much more fun than a traditional guestbook. 
I made my own photo guest book pages like the ones from Guestbook store. We appointed a person to take the polaroids and then people filled out their card during the reception at their leisure. We got almost 100% of our guests and it was so much fun to look back at the pictures and read people’s comments. I highly recommend it!
I also worry that having an involved guestbook will create a bottleneck or that people will bypass it alltogether. I like the idea of having people fill out individual cards at their leisure as long as they remember to ‘turn them in’ before leaving. I look forward to hearing what ideas others have for this topic.
The whole polaroids thing has thrown a kink into my plan - because I like them! But I was planning on putting photos of us scattered in with envelopes. I’m going to have notecards for people to write wishes and then put them in the envelopes that I have pre-pasted into the scrapbook. Easy and fairly non-time-consuming.
I love the guestbook store’s pages, and was keeping them in mind for my own wedding… but I was thinking about having the cards be free of the book, with plenty of colored pencils to sign with, encouraging guests to take a couple minutes at their reception seats to have some fun filling it out… (maybe good for a cocktail hour, while people are still milling about)
A great idea I’ve heard of but didn’t use is to buy a coffee table book of beautiful pics. For example pics from around the world or just the US. Guests can then sign on any page they’d like - maybe their home state - or a place they’ve visited - or a pic they like. A book of signatures is kinda boring - this way you have a beautiful book filled with little notes/signatures of your friends and family.
I didn’t use a book at all. I had all the guests sign blocks of fabric. (we ironed paper to one side to make them sturdier to sign) I’m going to make a wall hanging quilt incorporating the signed blocks along with blocks photocopied with pictures from our day and purple fabrics (since that was my color). When we got back from our honeymoon and I flipped through all the blocks I started crying. The blocks were creative, heartfelt, and so sweet! I am SOOOO glad I went with this idea. For example my friends with a two year old traced her hand, and then filled it in with their message. What a precious treasure to have her little hand included in the memory! Plus the notes from the younger ones in their childish script touched my heart! Too bad all the blocks are still in a box - now I have to design the actual quilt and make it! (The bonus is that my mom will help - which also makes the project special!)
Another idea is to have 4×6 plain index cards for guests to write messages on. During the reception - or after - they can be inserted in a mini photo album to keep them all together.
We also thought about going the Guestbook Store route. Suggestions I’ve heard about the bottleneck problem include placing pages at each seat and passing out pages with clipboards so several people can work on theirs at a time.
I think we’re going to have people sign the mat of a matted engagement photo.
I have to say a guestbook with that much info was intimidating to me as a guest at a wedding. I think you could make a photo book with cute old photos of the two of you as kids and then throughout your courtship (so old fashioned of me i know)! you can make photo books from shutterfly, kodak gallery, mpix, mypublisher — so many other quick and easy sources.
we decided to do wish cards so more than one person could write at once then plan to put them in a scrap book (of course, 2 months post wedding all that stuff is just in my card box)!
My wedding is also in December, and I’ve just found these instant photo album guestbooks from Adessoalbums.com. Each album comes with a polaroid camera and all the pages have slots to fit the photos in, plus space for writing. I am going to provide two of these books, plus lots of extra film, plus some props for people to use in their photos (our wedding has sort of a literary theme, so I am asking everyone to take a polaroid of themselves with either a Will Shakespeare or a Jane Austen Action Figure I am leaving next to the cameras.)
I hope to have a guest platter with signatures. I guess I’m just practical like that. It’ll be a platter I can use for dinner parties, etc. And if it gets worn or scratched, well then it’ll be my own personal antique.
I was just playing with the guestbook store site and saw that there was a coupon code at the checkout, so I googled it and found another board (gasp!) where they said the code was WEDBLISS for 10% off. But that post was from 2005.
I lied. The new code apparently is THANKS. I didn’t read the entire thing before i posted before. Shame on me.
Ooh I like those Adesso guestbooks– I have to keep those in mind!
I think that guestbook store pages are great if you’re having a destination wedding or if there’s a lot of out of towners. Sorry in advance for anyone doing this but….I don’t get the where did you travel from/how far away question. If I said where I’m from, won’t you know how far away it is? And realistically, you know how you know all your guests so why do you need them to fill out a section on how they know you?
A friend of mine just got married and did a “special wishes” card for each guest to fill out. When we were going through them after the wedding, we found that 95% of them had the same comments - lots of children, a happy marriage, etc.
Personally, I like the idea of a guestbook where we can write our own personalized message instead of filling out answers.
for my friend’s bridal shower, we took polaroids of the guests as they arrived. we taped the picture onto a blank page in the signing book and had them sign their names or write a little note to her next to their picture. i also saw that at a wedding i went to.
i’m having them sign my engagement session book. but i like the idea you have of having them fill out the pages with different questions on it.
I too would feel pressured by having to fill in that much information. But I do love the idea of buying a fabulous coffee table book that has some meaning — maybe your honeymoon destination, wedding location etc — and having guests sign wherever, like a year book.
A friend of mine did the silver platter guest book a few years ago and it didn’t turn out as nice as one would think. The engraving pens are actually pretty difficult to use — esp for elderly guests — so most of the names were illegible.
Something like that would be fine for the reception, but at the ceremony you really just need something people can sign and go. If people try to take time to write well wishes you end up with a line, or people just skipping the book all together. I was at a wedding that the bride was at least 45 minutes late walking down the aisle because of the line of people waiting to sign the book and get seated. Finally they cut people off and asked them to sign it at the reception so that the wedding could start.
Check out my blog post for Tuesday of this week. It may be an option for you. Make beautiful pages people can simply sign and then add it to the pages of your album
Having read your posts Ms. Peppermint, you could always go with a book filled with the movie poster images you’re using. Or perhaps create a big movie poster of the two of you (I think someone on weddingbee did this or posted about this before…). You could always go with the postcards of the area you’re getting married in as I’m sure there are some awesome postcards both current and vintage of the Palm Springs area. Then you can bind them into a postcard flip book. Or just scan their images in and put them into a book like a mypublisher and have people sign next to them….
I, personally as a guest, do not like long, involved guestbook signings, and am more inclined to bypass signing altogether if I have specific questions to answer.
I’m doing what Jilian mentioned — using a coffee table book. We’re getting married in Philadelphia, so we bought a beautiful book with just pictures of the city. There are lots of pages with a half piccture and half white space, so guests have room to write as little or as much as they each desire. Plus, since it’s a gorgeous book, we’ll actually leave it out on our coffee table, which we wouldn’t do with a guest book — it would just go in a box and collect dust otherwise!
The great thing about the pages from The Guestbook Store is that they come loose.
I am creating my own pages similar to it, and I’ll have loose pages for everyone to fill out at the same time (and plenty of pens) so there isn’t a line. My fiance can bind books, so after the wedding, we’ll take the pages and make it into a book.
we used the guestbook store book for our wedding, and it was a huge success. I had a few concerns about if people would find it “too much work”, but a ton of our guests mentioned how fun it was to fill out the pages and to see what other people filled out. a big surprise to us was that most people filled out their own instead of as a group or couple! my husband and I had a great time reading through the entries and looking at the pictures people drew. the kids at our wedding came up with the most imaginative answers, and that in itself made the book worth it!
We placed the blank pages and a ton of markers in a basket at the entrance to the reception area. There was a framed “instruction” note letting people know that they could take a page and markers to the table with them, and to return the pages to the book so others could read them after they filled them out. I think most of our guests filled them out during dinner and during the toasts… which is exactly what I would do during a wedding
We got a huge, oversized cookbook from a favorite area restaurant. People were inspired by signing their wishes next to fun recipes.
One tip I have is to maybe bring your guestbook to the rehearsal dinner, so people can start signing it it there.
A lot of good ideas here! I’m having a destination wedding and wanted to go the Polaroid route…but we won’t be having many guests so I might wait to do that at the at home reception when there’s more guests. I just made an engagement photo album from Shutterfly that turned out great, so I will use that and guests can sign it yearbook style.
Having recently coordinated an event where the bride and groom chose one of these Guestbook Store books, I’ve gotta tell ya, 75% of the guests don’t fill out the whole thing, you are lucky if they answer 2 questions. Most just answered one, I guess they find it too long or involved….and the book ended up looking very bare, in my opinion!
At my brother’s wedding they gave every table a blank book to sign. My sister and I both felt very overwhelmed by this because it was basically her family, me and my fiance at the table and we had an entire book (about the size of a children’s chapter book) to fill out.
We saw some people writing a ton of stuff, but I actually didn’t end up writing anything. I just thought it was a lot to ask of your guests to write that much.
I decided to go away from the polaroids because of the time issue, and to be honest th ey’re kind of expensive! Instead, I did something a little random… we bought a 4′x4′ piece of canvas. We drew a large ‘M’ in the center, and we got sharpies with different sized tips for guests to sign their names around the M. The great thing is you can sign from any side meaning 4 can sign at one time. From there, we’ll have it put on wooden backers (less than $50 at most frame shops around here) and we’ll hang it in our loft. It’s kind of like fun, personalized art that we can always have - and my mom is going to have it put on backers during our honeymoon so we can take a photo, have it printed on blank cards and use them for thank you notes to guests! I’m so excited that they’ll get to see the final product.
If I had to come up with answers to multiple questions, or unique wishes for the couple beyond “congrats”, I would just skip it and head for the bar. I love my friends and family who got married, and I’d be happy to tell them in person how excited I am for it, but please don’t make me write about it.
We’re getting our guestbook from the Guestbook Store. We’re going to have the pages laid out on everyone’s plate waiting for them at the reception. This is something that the guests can do while they’re waiting for our arrival and before the first course comes.
The absolute best guestbook I’ve ever seen (I’ve worked quite a few weddings) was the couple had bought a scrapbook, put their engagement photos in the scrapbook (1 to 2 photos per page) and asked people to find a photo they liked and sign next to that.
In addition to that, I’m going to include in my wedding invitations a piece of paper that asks for “marriage advice”. I’ll ask people to return that will their RSVP. I think that will be one of the funnest aspects, because people have hilarious advice!
I am definitely with you in wanting something a little more fun to look at than just some signatures in a plain book. My idea was to have a large photography book of our honeymoon destination and have people sign the pages. We’d still have the signatures, but the book would have more meaning and be fun to look at, even as a cofee table book. I had trouble finding a good Costa Rica picture book (all I found was travel books for Costa Rica but there were options for Italy, France, and other places) so we ended up with an Irish Blessings book. It was perfect because we both are part Irish and it had great photos of the Irish countryside and quotes/blessings on the opposite page. The quotes were on just white pages so it left tons of room for people to sign, agree with the blessings, etc. People liked this idea and feel free to do whatever you want.
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Miss Peppermint, LA/Palm Springs
Age and Occupation: 23, Actress
Fiance's Age and Occupation: 24, Web Producer
Engagement Date: October 21, 2006
Wedding Date: December 2007
Blogging Since: July 2, 2007
Venue: historic estate overlooking the heart of Palm Springs
About Me: I am a Southern California native who enjoys cooking, writing, travel and all things in the arts. Mr. Peppermint and I met in college and he proposed on our four year anniversary in one of our most special places, Joshua Tree National Park. We're having a destination wedding in Palms Springs that will incorporate tradition as well as reflect our personalities!
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