Photo Frame Mat Guest Book... or Nothing?

I am so so excited about doing this!!!! I ordered it a few weeks ago and the reviews are insane!

@Laura: I really like that! Simple and beautiful.

It was $130 on Etsy for the 24x24. Different fonts to choose from and it's handcrafted. I can't wait to hang it up in our home

We're doing a "guest tree" to hang up in our home because I also didn't like the traditional guest books. Photo is a sample one from the seller, not my actual one (which hasn't arrived yet!)

@Rayla that's what we're doing - FH has his heart set on it. If we end up with weird unsigned gaps or something, we'll just write in some nice quotes or paste on little heart cutouts to fill the spaces.

Honestly do a search on Etsy you will find a ton of ideas this is what we are doing, everyone signs a heart

@ Flighty Flutist: May I ask, what size (dimensions and width) mat are you using? How many guests? I really have no idea how large of a mat to buy to accommodate all the signatures. Also, do you think people will just sign their names or add messages? I would honestly prefer if people just signed their names, but don't know if there's a polite way to indicate this.

So we did a piece of art framed and let the guests sign the mat of the frame. Then after the wedding we put in a photo that we asked the photographer to take, which was a group shot of our guests with us in the middle. She was up high to get a downward looking shot. Turned out great. Unfortunately I have everything in storage, as we are moving, but here is the site http://www.mydreamlines.com and if you go up to gallery you will see ours is the second sketch under dress and suit. You can scroll down some and on the right sidebar thingy you will see the guestbook idea. Good luck in your decision. I love the quilt idea. I may do that for our baby shower.

We are doing this! We like to travel and were having the hardest time coming up with a non traditional guest book! Once we found this we were sold! Now I just have to put my crafting skills to work

@ Erica: Thanks! Your link is really helpful, they provide a guide for deciding how big a mat to get based on the number of guests! Exactly what I needed.

@ Everyone: Thanks for showing me all your guest books! They all look good and I'm getting lots of ideas.

If you're not sure, I can say that we decided against any kind of formal guestbook whether it was a book, framed photo or piece of decor. Knowing our taste may change (and both of us are not thrilled about decorating with something that has signatures all over it) and that the piece may not always fit in with the style of our home are two main reasons we decided not to do anything.

We will be saving the cards we get into a small notebook. There are some great DIYs online for how to make a keepsake book with the cards. IMO that's where people would write their most heart-felt well-wishes or else say it with the card itself.

We decided on a Message in the bottle concept, but good luck with your idea, Etsy has amazing ideas.

Were using dinosaur wood cutouts in our wedding colors! FH loves Dino's and we have all kinds of Dino stuff everywhere so it just felt natural to incorporate it in the wedding! I say go for something non traditional!

This is what we did.