Wedding Tips: Creative DIY Guestbooks
Easy and Inexpensive Ideas For a Fun Do-It-Yourself Guest Register
With some inspiration, planning and elbow grease, you can transform your wedding guestbook into a personal, funny celebration of the sweet, goofy, and colorful sentiments your guests reflect on on your big day.
Give Them Ideas
Don’t just put out your guestbook and hope for inspiration to strike. Get beyond “Best Wishes” and “Good Luck” by inspiring your guests to get personal when they sign their names. Call upon their creative juices with a framed note displayed prominently on the guestbook table instructing your guests to “make a prediction of where the bride and groom will be in 25 years” or “write down your favorite part of the wedding (so far).”
Not every idea will strike a chord with every guest. Give a few different options so your relative can get inspired and not feel like she’s competing with the joker in the group.
Some guests will be feeling sentimental and romantic, while others will want to show their charm and wit. Draft questions that will allow everyone’s best to shine through.
Worth a Thousand Words
Art there artists in your family? Play to their strengths by putting out crayons or markers and asking for a self-portrait with the happy couple, or a drawing of the bride and groom’s future children or the first house they’ll own. This is a great way to bring out the kid in everyone, even the kids.
You can customize a template offered by one crafty groom on craftzine.com or use it as inspiration to design your own.
Or put out a Polaroid camera, a bunch of film, and some props like veils and bow ties or even fake mustaches for a photo guestbook. Let your loved ones mug it up and leave you with pictures that say exactly what’s in their hearts and how good a time they had. The camera and the film make up most of the cost. Film can run you about $1.35 a snap. An inexpensive photo album can hold it all together.
Break It Down
Who says the guestbook has to be a book at all? Use the theme, your monogram, or the image of your invitations on 3 by 5 cardstock and leave room for guests to write their favorite memory of the bride and groom or a note of advice. Cut a slot through the lid of a classic hat box and glue ribbon over the exposed edge for a beautiful receptacle for the completed cards.
Incorporate the cards into the wedding photo album to add context and sentiment to the images. Pair the guestbook cards with a photo of the guest who penned the card, or with the photo of the favorite memory described on the card.
Thanks for the Memories
Take a DIY tip from photo sites like picaboo.com and make your album a reflection of your lives up to your special day. Collect pictures of you and your sweetie from childhood through engagement and put them into an album with plenty of room for your guests to write. It’s a great way to prompt a favorite memory from a relative or childhood friend, to show the joy of your budding relationship and to let all of your guests see how you arrived at this day.
A wedding guestbook reveals more than who showed up on your big day. Whether your guests are shy and need a little coaxing or you want to let your artistic guests know they’ve got free rein to let their creative side loose, with a little inspiration from you, your guestbook can be one of the most memorable parts of your wedding.
Crayons will bring out the kid in your guests.
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