Wedding Guestbook with Photos

DIY Guestbooks are one of the searches most often coming to my blog. One of the details of our wedding that we now treasure is our DIY guestbook. Mine is the Polaroid type that is gaining popularity now. They are selling them also at a high price on the internet, but I decided to just do my own.

Here is a picture of the cover. I bought this wirebound book at Michaels, pasted an aqua sheet of paper on the cover, then put the scrapbooking stickers to decorate. I was tickled pink with the outcome.



We had two types of guestbooks, the traditional version and the photo version. I spent a lot of time deliberating over traditional type guestbook to buy. I'm calling the traditional guestbook the type that says "Guests" on the outside and a bunch of lines on the inside. They range from $9.99 at Michaels to $200.00 for a beautiful silk bound book. In the end, I realized that the traditional guestbook wasn't going to mean much to me so I opted for the Michael's version for $9.99. After all, it only has your guests names and addresses in it. It is not worth it to spend a lot of money on this type of sign-in guestbook because once you open the book to sign you lose the appeal of the outside. Most of the pages on the inside look the same. And honestly, are you going to be looking at it often, or ever? Like all things related to a wedding, this is another "essential" where they try to price gouge you. Usually there is a pen that accompanies it, which is usually a crappy ballpoint that doesn't write well. In my opinion, the pen is also not worth it.

To pull this off, you need a friend who is willing to take charge of this project at the wedding. Thank you Renee!! Of course you need a Polaroid (I borrowed one) and film, glue to paste the pictures in the book. I also bought a quality set of Staedtler felt tip markers so they could write a message in different colors. It would also behoove you to get the DJ involved so everyone visits the Guestbook Area.



Encourage your friends to be creative and write something fun. If you can see from one of these pictures, a couple of my friends blacked their teeth out so I would be sure to miss the gang from South Carolina. Hardy har har. Another wrote some sage advice to "remember to always laugh and dance".

So much of wedding is about "supposed to" and buying things out of some Pavlovian response. Think about what really matters to you. What do you want to be left with after the wedding? It was hard for me and I'm sure it's hard for anyone planning a wedding. Throw in a finite budget and it becomes even more important to discern what is the best option for your wedding day.

By the way, I think this a great memory book for anyone throwing a party, baby or bridal shower. You can even plan to do this for someone and present it to them as a gift. It is so fun to read what people write and see their smiling faces.

The Wedding Flowers

Gustavo the Groom helping prepare the flowers. Do you see why I married him?

I see that many people are interested in a do-it-yourself bouquet for their wedding so I wanted to update the information on how I did mine. I chose Grower's Box to order my flowers. It was $200 for 250 roses in four different colors. I got pale pink, ivory, two toned pink and peach, which looked like orange.

I'm not going to tell you that it's lickety-split, then you're done. It is a little bit of work, but if you do it right and have some help, I'd highly recommend it!

You get the flowers delivered fairly early in the morning two-three days before the wedding. My wedding was on Sunday and we had them delivered on Friday. They have to hydrate in spring water for a day. We kept ours in the plastic wrap so the flowers wouldn't open too quickly. Honestly, they warn you that they will look dehydrated, but mine looked fine except for a few bad ones.



This picture is what 250 roses in a bucket looks like. Oh, but be careful! There are flowers just underneath the flowers. When you cut the stems the first time, you may cut them all the same length and not notice that they are tucked under there. We didn't notice because they were still wrapped when we made the first cut. For us it didn't matter because they were still too long.

I had a friend who was instrumental and took charge of the whole process. I would not recommend that the BRIDE is that person. There was so much going on the day before that it is too much to do flowers too. I told them what I liked and they basically just did it for me. I could see how it was going to look by bunching them together. Of course a picture would be best. Since I got married in SC and I live in Texas, I had a hard time remembering everything I had to bring. All my wedding pictures got left at home.

Grower's Box has instructions on how to care for the flowers and their customer service is wonderful. We had a bunch of vases and picked the flowers to go in each bouquet, then tied them up.



Here are the final boxes of flowers minus my bouquet which we put in a cooler. In total, we did four bridesmaids, my bridal bouquet, the throwaway bouquet, 10 bouts, and 8 vases of flowers for the tables. We did them on Saturday afternoon and evening. The truth is we didn't go to bed until 3:00 am! Learn from me, START EARLY!

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Here is a photo of how they turned out! I loved my bouquet. It was so fragrant and I adored the ivory roses.



The reason I decided to do my flowers was purely financial. Obviously it would have been easier to have a florist do them and deliver them. Also, I was content to have very simple bouquets for the wedding. If I had wanted a "designer bouquet", it would have been more costly and difficult. I was quoted $850 for a minimal amount of roses in each bouquet and table flowers. For example, we would have had 6 roses in each bridesmaid, but with greenery too. We used about 12 when we did it with no greenery.

I have a feeling that using 250 roses with a florist would have cost me a huge amount of money. The florist quoted me $200 for only my bouquet and that was using 25 roses. Anyway, even if you decide to use a florist there are ways to save. I had considered the bridesmaids only carring a single flower. Everyone I polled thought this was a very elegant way to go. Even when money isn't a consideration, brides are choosing to do this because of the simplicity of the look. You can use a rose, lily, or even a gerbera daisy.

What I struggled with the most when planning the flowers or anything else for the wedding was "What should I do?", instead of "What do I want to do?". I honestly didn't know what I wanted so I just kept researching and looking through magazines until it hit me. What did I learn? Go with your first instinct. There are no wrong answers. All flowers are beautiful. In my opinion, don't spend thousands of dollars on them. Literally, you hold your bouquet for a few moments and that's it. Another piece of advice, don't let people "should" on you and don't "should" on yourself. Again, there are no wrong answers. I got stressed over many details and wanted others to tell me that I made the right choice. If you need that too, I'm telling you that if it is what you think is pretty, then you are making the right choice. There will not be anyone judging the final show!

Other materials that you need: flower tape, floral wire, wire cutters, vases, spring water, and satin ribbon to wrap the bouquets.

**Please email me if you would like me to write about other aspects of wedding planning.

DIY Wedding Bouquet

I feel like I've just uncovered one of the biggest scams of the wedding industry. Yesterday, after talking with a few friends, I decided to do my own wedding flowers. Just in case I was getting in over my head I wanted to do a trial run. Here is my practice bouquet which took me less than five minutes. It doesn't look perfect because the flowers are almost dead. I left them a little too long.

There is a whole new market of producer to consumer floral companies out there. You can even order roses in bulk from Sam's club. I haven't ordered yet so I can't recommend a specific one, but I have seen good reviews online for Sams and www.freshroses.com.

I realize that I am not going to have a genius floral designer to do my flowers, but the truth is that a modern bouquet consists of tightly wrapped roses with little greenery. I was quoted $200 for only my bouquet. There are four bridesmaids bouquets and bouts also to consider. To give you an idea of the savings, you can buy around 100 roses for $80.

Because I have a friend who feels confident in this endeavor, we are also going to do the boutonnieres. The day before the wedding we are going to have a girly party and do the flowers. It will be five bouquets and 10 bouts.

I'm writing this because I want any other bride who is on a budget to know there are options. There is so much marketing for your "perfect day" that in many ways brides check their common sense at the door. We feel like if we want to save money that somehow we are cheating ourselves of perfection. Ridiculous!

Although I would feel more confident telling you about how my flowers turned out rather than the plan, I have already decided that if they are not perfect that is ok! Aren't all flowers beautiful, even one calla lily or one red rose?

I am using my creativity in every possible way without compromising any part of a beautiful wedding. I have questioned myself along the way, asking what is really important to me. Every detail is another few hundred dollars and it really can get out of control-fast! Just one little example is the Guest Book. There are beautiful silk and linen covered guest books that people can sign in at the door and they are around $100. Of course I would pick that out if there were no price difference, but let's think about it. The Guest Book is OPEN so nobody can see the cover. If I saw it right, the inside pages look pretty much the same as the one that I got at Michael's for 9.99. Besides, what am I going to DO with this $100 book after the wedding? Mine has a place for addresses when people sign in, so that is useful to me, but am I going to go reminisce over people's signatures? NO!

That is one example, but some of the "standards" we nixed were monogrammed napkins, wedding favors, and rehearsal dinner. Still, I wouldn't call our wedding a budget wedding, but we are eliminating the parts that don't matter to us.

We have 21 days to go and then we are off to San Francisco for our honeymoon!

Beauty News: Free Gift Alert

I have a scoop on a beauty gift coming up. Now, my disclaimer is don't go for the gift unless you actually needed to buy something anyway!! I have been searching around for some foundation and found some I like at NM. I usually detest this store because of the snobby salespeople. But, if you are going to spend money on these products anyway, why not get some free perfume and makeup samples. I don't have the list yet, but I know that it starts on September 6, nationwide. I will be on my honeymoon in San Francisco so I'll try to sneak over there and enjoy the experience. Hold off on any purchases so you can take advantage of the event right around the corner.

Me, I'm still planning my wedding. Today I had another tweak of my wedding dress. I think I've had about 6 fittings by now. The process is much more interactive than I anticipated. Today I also tried on my veil to have it altered too. I actually looked like a BRIDE! It was super fun and I'm finally starting to get excited. 24 DAYS!!