Bonus Crafting Post! Guest Books!

Earlier today I promised you a bonus crafting post...and like I said, I don't like to make promises I can't keep!

Inspired by this pin on Pinterest, I decided that we should have one small guestbook on each table, rather than one big guestbook in the entry/lounge area.  I love the idea of having a special book to open on each anniversary for the next twelve years, a little memory of the wedding for the first twelve years of our marriage (twelve tables, twelve books, twelve years, and whoa just realized, getting married in 2012...ooooh spooky?).  We're going to provide a stack of card stock and pens at each table so guests can write messages to us and put them in the books.  

Some of the books - Andrea came over and helped me trace
the numbers from a stencil and color them in with silver
Sharpie.  It actually went a lot faster than we had
anticipated, and they turned out really well!

I decided to go one step further though...the books I bought are art portfolio display albums (yay acid free!), and we're going to put a disposable camera on each table so people can take pictures to go with their notes - we'll print the photos after the wedding, and have friends help us insert them into the right places in the albums (so we don't read the messages until the appropriate anniversary, of course!).  It should be really fun to look back on the photos people took of themselves as the years go by, a nice balance of unprofessional/silly/lower-quality photos to have in addition to the undoubtedly gorgeous ones Em and Aaron (her husband and co-shooter) will be taking (which will go in the fancy shmancy wedding album I'm making from Photobook America, thankyougroupon).

Aly found these "classy" black disposable cameras that
turned out to be cheaper than the standard yellow or
green ones anyway! Score!

We might print labels or photos to go in the spines of the albums, so that when they're standing on our shelf, we can easily grab the one we want.  You can kind of see the empty spines in the picture at the top - the paper included for the label was such a bright white that it seemed a little jarring.  Looks better without.  Maybe I'll just write on the plastic with Sharpie to mark the books if we don't think of a good idea for a photo/label insert.  Maybe we'll print little labels with the art from the invitations.  We'll see!

All that's left to do is print up the little signs to explain to people what to do and gather the pens and cardstock :)

PS ooh! idea! We'll also take a picture of us on each anniversary, print it, and put it in the book that year.  oh, I am a genius.)