DIY Wedding Guestbook Tips

Most brides- and grooms-to-be have so much to do that the wedding guestbook ends up being an afterthought. Hastily purchased from the nearest stationery store, the wedding guestbook is usually just a blank book with a pretty cover. Sometimes the cover has a slot where the couple can stash a photo of themselves. Most of the time, the wedding guestbook is nothing memorable.

That's kind of sad, right? The newlyweds will someday have nothing more than the photos they collected and the words their guests shared with them with which to remember their nuptials. That's precisely why we think wedding guestbooks should be memorable in and of themselves!

That said, here are three DIY wedding guestbook ideas that are guaranteed to impress your guests and to delight you for years to come.

1. Take paper that coordinates with your wedding colors and cut out a bunch of "clothing." Ask guests to share their well wishes and advice by writing them on a shirt or some pants or a skirt. Then have a volunteer (e.g., a bridesmaid or the MOB) hang each greeting on a makeshift clothesline using real clothespins. After the wedding, you can paste each greeting into a book you buy or make specifically for this purpose. This wedding guestbook is a lot of fun, especially at an outdoor wedding.

2. Buy a coffee table photography book that has a lot of whitespace in addition to beautiful pictures. Make sure it's light on text, lest guests spend too much time reading and not enough time writing. Better yet, use of one of the online services that lets you make your own hardbound book and turn that into your wedding guestbook. You can fill it with pictures of your and your intended, photographs of your favorite places, and even snippets of poems or songs that are meaningful to you.

3. Okay... regardless of what we wrote above, blank books aren't all bad. Go down to your local art supply shop and pick up a large hardbound sketch book. Use anything and everything to decorate -- hot glue buttons, feathers, sequins, photos, etc. onto the cover, making sure that your original creation will coordinate with your wedding colors. This is where your personality will shine. Do you love all things frilly and fem? Let it show with lace and flowers! Are you as quirky as all get out? Decorate your wedding guestbook with army men and toy cars. Don't be shy -- anything goes!


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