Ideas for a Unique Wedding Guest Book

Wedding Guest Book as a Keepsake

On your wedding day, you will be surrounded by your closest friends and family. What a wonderfully rare opportunity to create a keepsake for you by those that mean the most to you!?

As you preserve the memories of your special day with keepsakes such as photo albums and videos, don't limit your memories to those you experience directly. Capture your guests' experiences so you can relive your wedding through your loved ones' eyes too.

By re-purposing the tradition of the wedding guest book, you can have a guest book, keepsake and family heirloom all in one.

Creative Inspiration for a Personally Unique Guest Book

Encourage your guests to leave more than just their signature. Inspire them to leave personal messages, such as a wish for the bride and groom, a memory of the past, or a thought on the wedding day. Combine their words with great photographs, and you will have a great keepsake and experience! A book filled with personality is much more fun and meaningful than a list of names of those who attended.

There is no limit to how creative you can be with your wedding guest book. With a little encouragement, your guests will be creative too. They will enjoy creating something special for you, the bride and groom, and you will cherish the memories of your event as you flip through your wedding guest book.

You can be as creative or traditional as you like in creating this special keepsake, and we've provided ideas to help inspire you.

Wedding Guest Book Ideas

Idea 1: Make it Meaningful

Invite you guests to share a personal message on our beautiful, stationery-quality cards. Collect them in a beautiful container such as glass vases, punchbowls, baskets, and decorated boxes. With loose cards, your guests will not have to wait in line to sign one book. Tell your wedding story by weaving wedding photographs in with the guests' stories and memories in a beautiful and archival album.

You can take this simple yet effective idea and be more creative with the "forms" to coordinate with your theme. Instead of note cards, use rocks with paper tags attached by beautiful ribbon. Have your guests write their message on drift wood if you have a beach theme. Or have them write their message on silicon leaves for an autumn wedding.

Idea 2: Book of Quotes

Rather than have your guests leave an unscripted message, prompt your guests with something specific such as "Love is…" and have them finish the thought.

Idea 3: Wedding Memory Book

Another way to have a meaningful wedding guest book is to create a memory book for your guests' messages. You don't have to create this memory book alone—you can ask each guest to send a contribution for the book a few weeks beforehand. Some ideas for pages include letters, photographs, recipes, memorabilia, etc. Your guests will enjoy the experience of creating the memory book and they will be inspired at your event.

Idea 4: Polaroid Wedding Guest Book Fun

A fun way to capture the essence of your day is to incorporate photos into the wedding guest book. Enlist someone to take Polaroid pictures of your guests. Have your guests attach the picture to the pages and write a message next to the photograph. A unique twist to this idea is to have your guests, in the picture, hold up large letters or a sign that has their special message. What a fun way to recall your special day!

Idea 5: Old Photo Booths

Rent an old-fashioned photo booth and have your guests take pictures during the reception. Have them tape the photos to the pages of your wedding guest book album where they can also write their message.

Idea 6: Book of Poems

Have your guests collectively create a poem commemorating your love and relationship. Start your poem out with a close friend or family member and then have each guest create a line.

Idea 7: Art as Signature

Encourage your guests to express their artistic side in your wedding guest book. You can leave markers, coloring pencils and other fun writing instruments along with your wedding guest book and/or mini-canvases (cards, blank pages in a book, etc). They can draw a picture of how they feel about the wedding day or what they see in your future.

Idea 8: Coffee Table Book

An inexpensive yet beautiful option would be to use a great coffee table book with lots of amazing photographs where people can leave messages on the pages. Better yet, make your own coffee book table of pictures of the bride and groom from a site like Picaboo and have your guests write their messages on the pages.

Idea 9: Look into the Crystal Ball

Have your guests share what they foresee in your future—how many children, the number of bedrooms in your 2nd home, or the number of times you'll move houses. They can write their predictions on beautiful cards and add these to an archival album.

Idea 10: Favorites and Bests

Have your guests share their favorite part of the wedding or reception with the bride and groom by asking them to write it on nice stationery or cards. Or have the guests vote on the "best dancer," "most favorite toast," "favorite dance song during the reception," or "cutest bridesmaid." The "bests" can be printed on note cards and left out for your guests to complete.

Idea 11: Scavenger Hunt

Have your guests put on their detective hats and discover something about other guests at the wedding. Engage your guests by assigning them to "find the guest who has 8 children," "find the guest who just retired," or "find the guest who just married and honeymooned in Belize." Leave the missions in small velum envelopes hung from tree branches (those in bloom would be lovely) using nice ribbon. Mark the assignees names on the exterior of the envelope. Then have them write a quick note about their experience at your wedding on the back of the mission card as their "signature." Add these cards to an album and incorporate great photographs.

Idea 12: Old Fashioned Typewriter

Martha Stewart Weddings introduced an intriguing option: rent or purchase an old typewriter and leave that out for your guests to type a message to the bride and groom. It will definitely be a conversation piece for your guests!

Guest Book Tips for your Wedding Day

Tip 1: Enlist a Friend

Any of our wedding guest book ideas can be easy, fun and meaningful. Enlist a reliable friend or family member to oversee the creation of your wedding guest book. You will be too busy having too much fun CREATING the memories to think about preserving them!

Tip 2: Set an Example

People have a tendency to follow the lead when it comes to wedding guest books. Ask a few close friends or family members to complete their entries before the event so your guests have some examples of what to do. If you have something particular in mind, be specific with your instructions. Your guests will feel more comfortable if there are already a few entries before theirs and they will have an idea of how to proceed with your traditional or creative wedding guest book.

Tip 3: Let the Guest Book Circulate

Your guests don't have to leave a message upon their entrance or wait in line, and your wedding guest book does not need to be parked on a stand. Let it circulate around the room! Pass the guest book around the room and encourage the guests to express themselves. With this method, you're sure not to miss any signatures.

Tip 4: The Importance of Archival Quality

Make sure your wedding guest book or other keepsakes are archival quality. If you want to keep your memories alive and not let them fade (quite literally), you will need to choose wedding guest books and scrapbooks that are archival quality.

Tip 5: Wedding Album Choices

It's important that the wedding album can support your choice of collecting your guests signatures and messages. If you are adding photos, cards or stationery to pages of your guest book, your album should be one that does not splay or "bulge." You will know this because there are spacers in the binding. Most scrapbook albums have spacers built in. Additionally, most screw post albums have the spacers built in so you can add items to the pages.

We recommend post bound albums for this purpose but also for the ability to add and remove pages. Who wants a wedding guest book full of blank pages?! Not only are post bound albums flexible, they are beautiful and sophisticated.

Tip 6: Lined or Unlined Wedding Guest Books?

All of these wedding guest book ideas will work best in a blank/unlined guest book or post bound album. But if you prefer a traditional wedding guest book and you would like your guests to sign their names as they enter the wedding reception, it is best to have a lined wedding guest book to keep the pages neat. It is simpler and it looks less messy.

Here's a Great Idea and Tip… Have a Lovely Wedding!

We hope to have inspired you to have a personally unique wedding guest book to honor and capture your guests' experiences. Whichever wedding guest book ideas you choose, make your wedding guest book one that you can come back to you on your anniversary to reminisce or to give to your children as part of your legacy in a family heirloom! Have a lovely wedding! And have lots of great memories kept!

About Blue Sky Papers

Blue Sky Papers offers a line of sophisticated and elegant guest books and heirlooms, handmade by skilled artists. From cloth to leather guest books with lined and unlined pages, we provide a wide variety of beautiful guest books to satisfy all styles and tastes.

All of our guest books can be personalized for that special touch. And for that added distinction at your personally unique event, our custom guest books are designed by you, handmade by us.