wedding guest "book"

When we were planning the wedding, one thing I was sure of was that I didn't want a traditional guest book.  I knew that if there was just a book on a table, half the guests wouldn't sign it in the first place, and at the end of the day it would go in a box.  I wanted something that we could display in our home.
So instead of a guest book, we had our guests sign either the matting of one of our framed engagement photos, or a big wooden W.  We have both of them hanging up where we can read the sweet notes from our friends, and they look pretty good :)

If a guest book is the way you want to go, go for it!  I have friends that made really cute ones on Shutterfly full of pictures of them and their friends that they display on shelves in their homes.  But if you want to get more artsy with it, go with a picture, your initial, or even a painting that means something to you (that you don't mind having people write on, of course).  Weddings are so personalized nowadays, you can really make your guestbook whatever you want!

DIY cake topper

Our plan all along was to make our cake topper... but originally, Caleb was going to make two birds out of wood and burn "We do" onto them.  But then he got a promotion and I got two jobs and time ran away from us, and there we were Thursday night with no cake topper and no time to carve one.

So, I dug through mom's scrapbooking supplies, came up with some cardstock, a metallic sharpie, and a few paper clips, and got to work.

I started by finding a bird template online and looking at it as a guide while I freehanded it onto the cardstock.  I'm not the best artist, so there was a whole lot of erasing and redrawing before I was done.

I cut out 4 birds, and then unbent the paper clips halfway and taped them to the inside to make the bird's legs.  I rolled up tape and stuck it to the inside and taped another one of the birds there so that the tape wasn't visible from either side.

I wrote "we do" with the metallic sharpie after repeating the process with the other bird, and we had a cake topper!

This may not be an heirloom that you pass through the ages, but it's exactly what I wanted and light enough that you don't have to worry about it going through the cake!

It turned out wonderfully! And our bank account was happy :)

wedding diy mini-post

Don't worry, more of these are coming! Mom and I have DIY-ed our little hearts out and I am so proud of all that we've made!

This is one of our projects - we went and got pallets from a warehouse in town, and used white paint to make a sign that points guests towards our venue!  It's a farm that's kinda off the beaten path, so signs were a necessity.

We found some cute bird stencils in the crafts section and added those, since birds are our theme!

The best part of this is it was completely free - the pallets didn't cost anything, and the white paint we already had from painting the garage earlier in the summer.

If your wedding venue is difficult to find, these are a cute and cost-effective way of making sure your guests don't get lost!