What are wedding announcements? Thank goodness for them since they help make those who you weren’t able to invite part of your wedding. There were so many uninvited guests who generously gave my husband and I gifts and I wanted to do something for them (besides sending them a thank you) and everyone else who couldn’t make it to the wedding or who weren’t invited.

Here’s the 411 on wedding announcements. They were traditionally sent by parents and usually up to a year after the wedding. Today couples also send them. Announcements are kind of like the announcements you see in the newspaper except you are sending it to specific family and friends. You shouldn’t expect a gift but of course if you receive one make sure you send a thank you.

They are perfect for us because we had a small wedding and it also works if you had a big wedding but still had a lot of people you couldn’t invite. They’re also great professionally to alert business associates and colleagues to the change in your last name.

Wedding Paper Divas has a wedding announcement I think I might send.

Sweet Matrimony

Although I haven’t gotten all my pictures yet, I did get a sneak preview. And because I wanted to give those who couldn’t make it a wedding picture, I was overjoyed that Wedding Paper Divas has a line of photo cards to select from. Since then, I’ve been playing around with all of their beautiful, modern photo cards to see which one I might send. The fun part of it is that you can customize any photo card, not just the thank you ones. The card that I ended up choosing, however, surprised me. Because the picture I chose had so much details on it, I found that a simple card worked best and decided on the Contemporary Solid Thank You Cards: Willow. Here is the result.

With less than a month left until my wedding day, I have to admit I’m getting just a little panicked. Okay maybe more like a lot! Especially since I’ve been undecided about a variety of things and one of them being the guest book. In Hawaii, a lot of couples use regular sign-in books for guests to fill out their name and addresses or have guests double-check their contact information on index cards. This is mainly for practical reasons-that way the couple can immediately send out their thank you cards without the fear of it not being sent.

The problem is that I love to do things differently and I’m definitely not practical. And I’d love to the photo booth idea that I wrote about a few posts ago, but while really cool, it was a little too expensive for our budget. So I have been debating for several months whether or not I should give in to the recent fad of the Polaroid guest book. You know the ones where someone takes a picture of your guests and then these photos go with their messages in a scrapbook? Well, you can get the entire kit with Polaroid camera, guest book and film as a set at beau coup and various other sites. The kit can get a little pricey which is why it’s taken me so long to decide.

Lucky for me, however, a friend who used this idea for her own wedding donated her camera to me. I found film at Target and will use photo corners to align guest’s pictures. Although time consuming, I think it’ll be worth it as a keepsake and to be able to match people’s messages with their faces. What kind of things are you doing for your guest book?