Our fabulous DIY guest book was fun to make and was just $10.
By Erika Lynde
The penny-pinching bride that I am, it’s a dream come true when Groupon offers something wedding related. This week it was Shutterfly. I’ve seen the deal many times before but never really paid attention till now. This time I noticed a specific word in their heading, the number one word that catches the eye of every bride. You guessed it: Wedding. I immediately opened their browser and began to investigate. They had all types of photo books — baby, vacation and, of course, lots of wedding books. It just so happened that we were in the market for a guest book, so I kept searching until I found one. This particular book featured fun activities for guests like Mad Libs and self-portraits and was everything we were looking for. Knowing we were in for a few good laughs, we purchased the Groupon and began to make our book.
I found the site to be a little tricky at first. Being a newbie (and not being very tech savvy), I had a hard time figuring out how to get started. Thankfully, Liam was here to save the day (he’s such a good guy!). After a little trial and error, we were on our way. There were so many ways to personalize the book and make it all about us. We could mix and match and change almost anything and with stickers, frames and creative typography, anything was possible. We were so excited and dove right in. The project became our best friend over night. We spent hours in front of the computer moving, organizing and figuring out which picture should go where. We agreed that the book should be fun and entertaining, so we opted for a few extra activity pages and made sure to include some silly photos for giggles. They even had the perfect stamps that matched the watercolor essence of our save-the-dates. It came out perfectly.
This was the most fun I’ve had in graphic design since Myspace (you know you all miss it). Of course, as with anything new, we had a few mishaps along the way like trying to use pictures with too low a resolution and accidently moving things off the page, all of which Shutterfly pointed out and helped us fix (thanks, Shutterfly!). In the end I have fiercely fabulous guest book that cost me $10, so who am I to complain?
Exceptionally well written! Thanks