Personalizing the Guest Book

There is nothing I hate more than boring guest books. Which, in my experience, is almost every guest book in the world. Okay, I'm exaggerating. But I do find them foolish. Why -- 20 years from now -- will you care what your guests' signatures look like? I know the main purpose it to record the names of the people with you on your special day, but why not make it more interesting than a single line per person? So in the past few months, I've been gathering some ideas and saving photos for inspiration. (By the way, a folder on my computer devoted to wedding inspiration = best idea I've ever had because otherwise I'd forget everything.)

One of my best resources for this, believe it or not, has been Martha Stewart Weddings. Although I have to take some of the advice on the website with a grain of salt since a lot of them are way more elaborate than what we need, it's been great for ideas that I can personalize to better fit our wedding. Plus, they've recently upgraded their "DIY Weddings" section, so it's more comprehensive.

Some of my favorite ideas from there, so far:

I really like the idea of having envelopes right in the guest book, but buying almost 100 tiny envelopes could get expensive and I'm not sure I want to commit to making them myself.

So I'm thinking we'll probably go with a combination of the last three. I'd like to have different colored cards for the guests to write on and then have them hang them on a tree similar to the one above. And when we get the photos of our guests at the DIY Photobooth printed, I can arrange them around the guest book tags from the tree. Because, while I like the idea of having the guests write directly into the guest book, like in the 2nd photo, I'm an organizational freak who would probably think the whole thing looked messy with everyone signing everywhere. This way, our guests will have more than single line to share their wishes with us. And I can be organized. What could be better?

Plus, I can make the tags myself. Easily. After seeing this photo from another blog, I couldn't resist buying an edge punch similar to the one in the photo. I got mine at Michael's for $12 (originally $18, but I rarely buy anything from Michael's without their weekly coupons).

So all I need to get is some card stock which is uber inexpensive and have a crafting night. Which will be like heaven to me.

For more ideas from Martha, there's a selection of 25 different guest books here.