Our Guest Tree

I kind of yawn when I see a guest book. I’m not sure why anyone needs a book full of congratulations and I certainly don’t think couples frequent this book more than once or twice in their lives. I know several people who have made photo books (from sites like blurb!) and a couple people who used photo signing mats (like this one)... but I wanted something still a bit more creative.

According to Hudson Valley Weddings, the guestbook originally served a legal purpose. Historically, every guest at a wedding was considered an official witness to the marriage, and guests left their names and addresses on the marriage certificate because they were legally required to do so.*

Though an actual book is the most traditional form of guestbook, recently brides and grooms have been getting more and more creative (yay!). After all, a guest book is simply a place for guests to leave their names and good wishes for the bride and groom at the wedding... so, that could be anything, right?

 Luckily, the trend of wedding guest "trees" was showing up everywhere on wedding blogs, so I was really excited when we decided that a guest tree would be our form of a guest book for our wedding.

Not sure what I'm talking about?

A wedding tree is a drawn picture of a tree with no leaves (ours is poster size) - and guests "leaf" their thumbprint on your tree then sign their name next to it. 

Wanna see??

Pictures found here, here, and here. 

We ordered ours from the Etsy shop Lovli Day - I opted for the printable pdf, then my dad had it locally printed in Yakima, and I'm still on the hunt for the perfect brown poster frame for it. I love how it fits our reception theme and its way more representative of our personalities than a typical guest book. Plus I'm super excited to hang it in our house after the wedding!

Here's ours! 

Want your own wedding tree? What you'll need  :

1. Image of a tree with no leaves. Make sure its a big enough tree for all your leaves (aka guests!) - Lovli Day recommends : 11x14 : under 50 guests, 16x20 : 50-100 guests, 18x24 : 100-199 guests, 24x36 : over 200 guests. Make sure you put your names and wedding date at the bottom! Etsy is a great resource for wedding trees.

2. Various ink pads. Choose the colors of your wedding or traditional leaf colors. I purchased three different shades of green ink pads for our thumbprints

3. A fine tip sharpie marker for guests to sign their names

4. Instructions for guests. I think its especially cute to use the play on words "Leaf your thumbprint"

5. Last but not least, baby wipes! No one wants to spend your whole wedding with a green thumb, give them something to wipe the ink off with. 

* For the record, I can't promise you that the history of the guest book according to HVW is 100% correct, but its the only explanation I could find on how the tradition of the guest book started.