Wedding guest book alternatives

Why do wedding guest books go unread?

Because they ask an open question at the worst moment. Somebody standing at a table with a drink in one hand and a queue behind them will write the shortest thing that is socially acceptable, and two hundred of those is not a keepsake.

Everything that works fixes the same thing: it gives people something specific to write, or it collects something that is not writing at all. That is the test to apply to every idea below.

The second test is whether the object has a job after the wedding. A thing that lives in a drawer was a nice hour on the day and nothing after it.

What are the alternatives, and which are worth it?

They fall into three groups: things guests write, things guests make, and things guests record. Written ones last best, made ones look best on the day, recorded ones are the most fun and the least revisited.

A recipe book

Each guest gives a recipe and a line about why. Specific enough that people write something real, and the object has a job for thirty years. Needs asking before the day, not on it.

Advice cards

A prompt on a card — best advice, a prediction, a memory. Cheap, works on the day, and far better than a blank page. The box of cards then needs somewhere to live.

A signed print or map

Handsome on a wall, and signatures round a border are exactly the non-message problem again. Best when the prompt is tighter than "sign here".

Polaroids with a note

Guests photograph themselves and write beside it. Genuinely lovely and genuinely fiddly: somebody has to own the camera, the film and the sticking-in.

An audio guest book

A handset guests leave a message on. The most entertaining thing on this list and the one people play twice: once the week after, once at an anniversary.

A quilt or fabric square

Beautiful and a commitment. Somebody is sewing this afterwards, and it is usually the person who suggested it.

A jenga set or wooden blocks

A message on each block. Charming, and hard to read as a collection later, because the messages are on a game you play in the dark.

A thumbprint tree

Fast, visual, and no message at all. Works as art, does not work as a record.

A bottle of wine per year

Guests write on labels to be opened on future anniversaries. Lovely idea, small print run of participants, and you have to keep the wine.

A book you love, signed in the margins

Guests annotate a favourite novel. Excellent for readers, baffling for everyone else, and the messages are scattered through 300 pages.

A video booth

Same virtue and vice as the audio book, plus editing. The footage needs somebody to cut it or it stays on a hard drive.

A guest book with prompts

The cheapest fix of all: keep the book and print a question on every page. Most of the benefit for none of the effort.

How does a wedding cookbook work in practice?

You ask before the wedding rather than on the day, because a recipe is not something anybody writes standing up. The book is collected in the weeks beforehand, and the blank space under each recipe is what gets written in on the day.

That order matters and it is the thing most people get backwards. Collecting on the day produces twelve recipes; collecting beforehand and signing on the day produces a hundred recipes and the signatures too.

It also solves the seating-plan problem of the guest book table, because there is no table. What sits out on the day is the finished book, open, with a pen.

What does a wedding guest book alternative cost?

Between nothing and about £200 for almost all of them. Prompt cards and a printed book are under £50; audio handsets hire at £100 to £200; a printed hardback cookbook is around £99 in the UK.

The cost that is easy to miss is your own time. A polaroid book, a quilt or a video is two or three hours of somebody's attention after the wedding, at the exact point when nobody has any.

Questions

What can you use instead of a wedding guest book?

Anything that gives guests something specific to say. Prompt cards, an audio guest book, a signed print or a recipe book all work for that reason; a blank book with a pen does not, whatever it is made of.

Is a recipe book a good wedding guest book alternative?

It is if you ask before the day. A recipe gives every guest something concrete to contribute, and the finished book gets used for decades rather than shelved, but nobody writes out a recipe standing at a table with a drink in their hand.

What is the cheapest wedding guest book alternative?

Printed prompt cards and a box, at under £20 for most weddings. Keeping a normal guest book and writing a different question at the top of each page costs nothing at all and fixes most of the problem.

How do you get guests to actually write something meaningful?

Ask a narrow question. "Advice for year one", "how you met one of us", "a recipe you would cook for us" all get real answers; "leave us a message" gets congratulations two hundred times.

When should you collect a wedding cookbook by?

Ask about three months before the wedding and set the deadline six to eight weeks out. That leaves time to chase, read it through, and have a hardback printed and delivered without it becoming a job in the last fortnight.