My Guestbook Blog

Waipuna Estate in Christchurch is set in luxurious surroundings with spectacular views of the Southern Alps. It is the perfect venue to host your wedding or private functions such as birthdays, anniversaries or family get-togethers.

What’s that got to do with us?

As we create guestbooks and the Waipuna Estate provides an exquisite boutique wedding venue -  we were thrilled to be asked to make a unique visitors guestbook for this charming Estate.

As you will see from the photographs of the guestbook, the cover has the Estates logo on the front. This is how we roll at My Guestbook, creating one off books to suit any occasion and working in with your brand. Want to know how we did it? We’ll let you into a secret, by using a heat transfer method. Because we can! As our products are made by hand we are always up for a challenge. In this case, Waipuna Estate required an A4 landscape book with custom cover.

As we have been providing guestbooks for some time now, we have learnt that guests regardless of the occasion, i.e weddings, funerals, leaving parties, prefer to be presented with a blank page when it comes to leaving a message. It allows the guests to be creative and leave personal messages rather than work around the restrictions of lined paper. We have found those who love to draw or stick photographs in books, enjoy the creative freedom this brings with it. 

And now, there is another use - promotional! If you opt for a book with this style of page design, you could use photos of the messages as feedback in your promotional material (with guests permission of course). The unique style of testimonial can not only be used online but the old fashioned way too (remember this!) - in print. This makes it a fantastic and unique promotional tool as well as a great visitors book for guests to peruse and write in.

For those of you who love attention to detail, allow us to share the specifications of this guestbook:

It has been made with the hands of an award winning artisan bookbinder.

Want to know how?

Go here for a peek at this amazing process. 

The pages inside are beautiful to the touch and white in colour.

The pages are 135 GSM paper providing the book with a luxurious feeling

Covered with white book cloth this classy guestbook is right at home in its new spectacular home.

And finally it has been perfect bound which means the pages have been hand glued to the spine of the book. Bound is this way your book will last for many years to come.

How perfectly perfect is that!

You can purchase your own visitors book here  

There have never been more choices for wedding guestbooks. But one thing has remained the same throughout, without interaction from your guests, it goes home the way it arrived: blank!

(photo: Stories Without Words)

In order to capture the thoughts, feelings and stories of your special day, it pays to follow these six simple guidelines:

1. Place someone you trust in charge of ensuring guests have their attention brought to the guestbook, and gently encourage reluctant signers to think about what they might like to write.
2. Don’t leave it unattended in a free for all situation once the drinks have started flowing
3. As nice as it might be to have your young nieces and nephews ‘draw a picture’ once again, do not leave them unattended to assume a blank book has been provided purely for their pleasure, as fill it they will. The same goes for fingerprint trees and wooden hearts!
4. Have the MC announce to the guests where the guestbook is and encourage the guests to sign it. Later on, pick up any slack with the DJ suggesting the guardian of the book circulate and find any late signers before the book gets put safely away!
5. If someone can’t make it to the wedding, you can always ask them to sign it afterwards (if that’s possible), or ask them to send a message and have someone write it in for them. In the case of the wooden heart guestbooks, you can always send out the hearts in advance and include them at the wedding.
6. Finally, don’t assume everyone hears the first, second or even third announcement to sign the book. Older people might not have heard, parents could be distracted with children and so on. Which is why it pays to have a trusted person in charge of the guestbook signing.