Weddingbee Blog

Miss Snow Cone posted recently about searching for a guestbook idea, and she might as well have been reading my mind! (Well, apart from the sports jersey one. We are just not sports fans.) Yes, it is almost a month to the wedding, and I don’t have this sorted yet. I mentioned this worry to Mr Cinnamon Buns recently, and he said that we could stop by Michaels and pick one up! He knows how much I love that store, so it was probably a surprise when I said um… no. I said no to a trip to Michaels! This is especially worth noting as since someone totaled my car when it was innocently parked on the street, I have no way of getting to Michaels unless Cinnamon Buns drives me. I’ve booked myself in for a driving lesson to learn standard, but that’s not for a few more weeks.

The reason I said no to a Michaels trip? This:

Picture from Impressions Are Everything (note - this item is not actually from Michaels)

If that is your bag, that’s great, but it ain’t my bag baby.

And it’s what my mind conjures up when I think of what Michaels might sell in the wedding aisle. I’m sure there are other options there, but I couldn’t get over the stereotype in my head. I’ve been spoiled by wedding blogs with guestbook quilts, fingerprint trees, posters, signed furniture, photobooks, framed photos with giant mat space and all sorts of other clever things. I was so spoiled that I couldn’t decide.

I thought a bit more, and decided I’d like something that would tie in to our book theme. I thought about this dictionary option for a while:

Photo by Alice Hu, via Weddingbee

But I worried about missing some sweet notes by flipping through too fast, although I did consider putting out some Post-It flags on the table by the book.

Today though, I had an idea, and I started searching Etsy for what I wanted: an upcycled vintage book sketchbook/journal.

“Essentials of Modern Turkish” by PrairiePeasant

“Treasure Island” by renovatedbooks

“The Best of the World’s Classics” by CandidaEtc

Bookbinders take old, damaged books and turn them into sketchbooks or journals! I especially like the coptic-bound ones because they lie flat when they’re open, and I love it when the creators include a few of the original pages of the books in with the new pages. I would order one right away, but I can’t find one that is just right. I know, call me Goldilocks. I’d love for it to be a title related to love or a book we both love, preferably in a nice colour (why are so many vintage books red?) with just a little bit of wear to show its age.

Just now though, as I was a paragraph into this post, divine inspiration hit. You’re seeing this (semi) live, hive. I want another pretty book for our ring ‘pillow’, remember? What if that book and the guestbook book were related? What if they were part of a series? Part of my favourite series in the whole entire world?! Nothing would be more appropriate! And I could totally find a use for book #3. But which book should be which? We’ve got:

• Fellowship of the Ring
• The Two Towers
• Return of the King

If we’re going to run with this, I need to find a hardcover set of LotR ASAP, and send it to one of the Etsy artists (luckily I found one in Canada. Unluckily, Canada Post is threatening to strike soon!). I wonder though, how I’ll feel about it being cut up. Some people would balk at hollowing out a bible, but I find this awkward. I haven’t felt awkward about all the random books we’ve been turning into centrepieces, but LotR really means something to me. Books have power that way, no matter how many times they’ve been printed. Random fact: there’s been a copy of The Book of Mormon sitting in the green room of one of the theatres I work at for 2 or 3 years now. No one remembers how it got there, no one wants to read it, but no one wants to get rid of it either. As far as I know, no one I’ve worked with there is Mormon, so the book shouldn’t hold power over us, but it seems like a disrespect to recycle it.

As it is the only one with ‘ring’ in the title, I feel that Fellowship of the Ring is perfect for the ring book (our guests are our fellowship!). Which of the other two should be the guest book, and what should we use the third book for? We could hollow it out and keep small wedding treasures in it, or have it also turned into a journal and make it into a photo album of sorts… I love the idea of having a ‘wedding’ set of LotR. I also have no worries about future readability of the books, as we already have 3 copies in the house.