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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Wedding Statistics from American Bridal

If you haven't already guessed by now, we're serious wedding voyeurs over at Smart Wedding Planning. If someone invites us to a wedding, we go. If someone asks us to look at their wedding photos, we do. Slides? We'll watch them gladly? You want us to have a copy of your wedding DVD? Yes, please! Basically, we're interested in anything and everything having to do with weddings, from who is having them to how much money they're spending. Hey, everyone has a hobby, right? Weddings are just our thing.

So imagine how tickled pink we were when we received word that American Bridal's yearly wedding survey results were finally in! Now we could see just how the weddings we've been to lately measure up to the average. When it came to excerpting it, we just couldn't decide what to include, so the full results are below:

Most (90%) are doing the planning themselves, with help from family and friends, and not hiring a professional wedding planner.

Since budgets are a concern for many, It looks like there’s a major spread in wedding budgets. About 25% are planning a wedding on a budget of less than $10,000, while 25% have wedding budgets over $25,001. The remaining 50% are somewhere in between, with 38% reporting in the range of $10,001 to $20,000.

“Location, location, location” as the saying goes, and roughly a quarter (25%) are having the reception at a hotel, and 10% have opted to host their nuptials at a country club. About 6% of couples selected a destination wedding, while a majority (55%) reported they are finding another type of venue to rent for the event and reception.

Size matters for this year’s brides, and by that we mean the size of the wedding party. Most couples (48%) will have between 5 to 8 people, while 37% of respondents have 9 or more bridesmaids and attendants. The trend seems to lean toward larger, more inclusive wedding parties, which leads us to the number of invited guests. Nearly 40% report they will have a guest count of more than 200 and 14% say their total guest count is under 100. A good 34% are inviting 100 to 150 guests.

As for cutting costs and wedding budgets, 68% said they’ve lowered their budgets by $1,000 or less. However, the small cuts they are making may not have a big impact on the actual wedding. Items that brides generally won’t skimp on are wedding gowns, photography and wedding rings.

When asked more specifically about what they would and would not change, most are not significantly altering music, location, reception style, or dress. Instead, they are more likely to adjust the cost of invitations, wedding favors, bridal accessories and gifts for the bridal party (combined, 46% of respondents said they would make changes in these 3 areas).

Click to shop for wedding favors and more at American Bridal

Out of Town Wedding Guests

Chances are there will be guests coming to your wedding that live hours or even entire states away. At my own wedding, at least one of the guests came from as far as Germany! Here's the deal: Out of town wedding guests know what they are getting into when they decide to travel to a wedding, so you are under no obligation to provide them with goodie bags, care packages, or other presents. Don't feel like you haaaaave to splurge on your wedding guests.

But if you want to go above and beyond helping with travel arrangements and accommodations, go nuts!

Send out a wedding newsletter early on, via e-mail or snail mail. Make sure your wedding newsletter includes information like the date of your wedding, the location of your wedding, the names and phone numbers of local hotels, restaurant suggestions, and stuff to do around town if you expect they'll be staying for a few days before or after the wedding.

You may also want to include rental car information for those traveling by air, as they will have to leave their cars at home. If you can afford it, arrange to have a car service pick them up at the airport. It's a nice way to welcome them, and helps your wedding guests avoid getting lost.

Provide your wedding guests with transportation to and from the wedding, e.g., a hotel shuttle bus or van. You can even rent a charter bus if it's in your budget! This is a really nice gesture for your out-of-town guests that don't know their way around your city or town. It is also good for any elderly guests that might have trouble driving.

Place wedding-themed gift baskets or gift bags in your wedding guests' rooms before they arrive. You can work this out with the hotel fairly easily. Include food, candy, any local "delicacies," a bottle of wine or mineral water, tourist information, a map, and a special thank you from the bride and groom. Some brides and grooms include fun stuff like rubber duckies!

Consider inviting your out of town wedding guests to the rehearsal dinner or a post-wedding brunch. It is a nice way to make them feel included in the proceedings, and it keeps them from spending too much time locked away in hotel rooms.


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Cutting Your Guest List

As you create your wedding budget, you may be dismayed to find that you have too many ideas and not enough money to see them all to fruition. If you're not willing to give up the fancy wedding favors or the real old fashioned photo booth or the horse drawn carriage, there's another option open to you. I want to warn you, though, that it's not an easy one.

One of the easiest ways to save money without sacrificing luxury is to cut your guest list. Cutting your guest list can seem like a painful idea at first...one to avoid at all costs. But the reality is that many of the people traditionally invited to weddings don't particularly care if they're invited...or they care about as much as you care whether they'll show up. I'm talking about your mom's tennis partner, your boss, your third cousin that you haven't seen since you were growing up, and your sister's new boyfriend of three weeks.

As much as you feel somewhat obligated to invite everyone under the sun to your wedding, recognize that cutting your guest list can mean the difference between having the fancy (albeit smaller) wedding you want and giving up all the things you've dreamed of since you were a girl. Here are a few hints that will help you pare down your guest list without offending anyone who really matters to you.

Go through your guest list and ask yourself:

• Have I seen this person in the last 12 months?
  
• Have I spoken with this person in the last 6 months?
  
• Did I send this person a Christmas card last year?

Then look at your guest list again with these thoughts in mind:

• Don't invite your parent's friends, particularly if you don't know them very well.
• Don't invite old high school or college friends that you know you'll never see again.
  
• Don't invite second and third cousins.
  
• Don't invite business associates (unless of course, it's your boss).
  
• Don't invite children.
  
• Don't allow single people (those without "significant others") to bring a date.
  
• Don't invite people just because you were invited to their wedding. If you've lost touch with them... don't feel obligated to invite them to your wedding.

Of course, if you'd like to invite children or your sister's new sweetheart, then by all means do so! These are not rules; rather, they are recommendations meant to help you afford the wedding you really want.

Click to read more ways to keep your wedding budget under control.