As Philip and I were planning our wedding, we really focused on thinking outside the box and creating unique keepsakes from the wedding day. As I was looking for guestbooks, I kept asking myself why we were even doing one. I found several I liked. Even made it to the checkout with one…but could never bring myself to buy one because I kept asking myself what we would do with it. I just knew it would end up stuck in a closet or collecting dust on a bookshelf. I know it’s a nice way to keep track of who was in attendance for our special day, but I knew there had to be a more useful, aesthetically pleasing way to keep track of our nearest and dearest friends and family members.

One idea I’d come across was a wedding wish jar. I initially found the idea over at the Marsha Stewart blog, however, the jar we ended up using was an adorable little “wish pot” I found at Swoozie’s in Green Hills (which is now closed).

This adorable little wish pot now sits in our living room on a shelf. It’s full of paper hearts upon which friends and family wrote sweet words of wisdom and encouragement. I love lifting the lid now and then to read a few of them.

Another idea I discovered thanks to Natosha over at Big Spoon, Little Spoon is a wedding tree print. She found it on etsy and shared it with me. There are a variety of “wedding tree” posters there which you can customize to your heart’s extent. I just did a search for them and here’s what I found. Here is what ours looked like:

This was a super-cool way to personalize our guests’ signatures and create another memento to enjoy for years to come.

Are you doing a guestbook? Have another unique idea for capturing guests’ signatures in place of the guestbook? Please share!