Our DIY Wedding Revisited #3: “Postcards” Guestbook

In the spring of 2009, I “married” my husband three times! First we filed the legal paperwork to be married (it’s a very cut and dry ordeal in S. Korea), then we had a traditional Korean wedding ceremony, and lastly, we had a wedding reception in California. This series is dedicated to the last event, which was truly my DIY masterpiece. Nearly every aspect of our travel-themed wedding was a DIY project that I poured my heart into. With my fourth wedding anniversary around the corner, I’m feeling full of love and generosity! I hope you enjoy this series of DIY wedding projects!

Today’s project: “Postcards” Wedding Guestbook for a Travel Themed Wedding

Instead of having guests sign a guestbook, I decided to make “postcards” for each guest to sign. After the reception, I incorporated these postcards into a wedding scrapbook.

At first, I thought about buying postcards, but I couldn’t really find any that had the vintage look I wanted.  Well, actually, there were lots of vintage postcards available through the web (and some of them were really beautiful!), but they were collectors items–so pretty much not a realistic option (I mean, I can’t afford to pay $23.00 for ONE postcard!).  So again, the solution came down to making these postcards myself.

First I gathered my tools: various colors of thick cardstock, a great scrapbook paper I found that looks like a whole page of postal stamps, scissors with an edge that looks like the perforations used for postal stamps, rubber stamps, stamp pads in black and green, and lots of glue!

I made various sizes of postcards–tiny ones for guests to just sign their names, and medium to large sized postcards for guests who want to write a bit of a message. Another benefit of the postcards was that multiple guests could sign at once, as you can see below.

Here’s the entire guestbook set-up:

The photo on the left is from our vintage-themed engagement photo shoot (future post!). We also featured a photo from our traditional Korean wedding ceremony that took place a month earlier. The postcards were available in a shallow wooden bowl. Once the guests signed their postcards, they deposited them into the old-fashioned bag you see on the right (flea market find!). The inside lid of the bag was lined with one of my passport invitations, one of our Korean wedding invitations and our “Save the Date” card (which featured a vintage airplane).

Afterwards, the postcards went into our travel-themed wedding scrapbook, which also included all the cards we received, as well as photos from our various travels over the years. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve pulled the scrapbook out to fondly visit memory lane!