I know Wedding Skulls readers love anything a little different from the “normal” wedding stuff, so I’ve been thinking about alternatives to the boring guestbook. At our wedding, we have a notebook my mum found in a hippy shop, with a resin cover moulded like a demonic Necronomicon, and a skull pen magnetically attached to the cover. It’s awesome.

A guest book is meant to be a memento for you, so you can look back and remember who came, and read the lovely wishes they wrote for you on your wedding day. I’m a big fan of guestbooks that let guests be as creative as possible, because I think that makes for a fun book to look back on. Perhaps you’ll enjoy one of these ideas:

Wedding Platter

You can buy plain white platters from many sources (check your local Ikea) and draw on them with ceramic pens, which you should be able to find at a craft shop. If you have a lot of guests they won’t be able to do much more than sign their name, unless you want an entire wedding crockery set (which sounds like fun, especailly if you have some artistic friends). In order to set the markers, you normally need to bake the platter in the oven, so make sure you buy one that’s oven safe!

Wedding Pillowcases

Buy two unpatterned pullowcases and have your guests sign these with fabric markers. This idea works with other functional items, like aprons, photo frames and matt boards, canvases, cushions, vases and tapestries.

Playing Cards

I always think playing cards are the oft-overlooked classy, simple decorating tool. For the retro couple, why not buy a packet of playing cards and have your guests scrawl on them? That way, whenever you play strip poker, you can be reminded that grams thought you were a beautiful bride.

Wedding Collage

If you’re a bit of an artist, design a wedding collage, (just design it, don’t make it yet) which will include some of your wedding photos and mementos, and some means of guests signing it (little bits of paper cut out as skulls, or leaves, etc). leave the cut outs on the guest table with lots of multi-colored pens and

Sweet Tooth

Have a cupcake or cookie-decorating station, and have each guest make up an edible with their name on it, or a short message. Arrange the yummys on a table and take several good photos. Now eat your wedding guestbook for dessert!

Garden Feature

Have your guests write their names on a rock with a pen that won’t wash off. Seal the rocks with varnish and arrange in your garden. Plant a flower that reminds you of your relationship, and watch it grow together.

The Steampunk Book

Have a friend sit at a table with an old typewriter. Your guests dictate messages which she can then type out. Use these typed messages to create a steampunk-themed scrapbook or other art item. For extra fun, have your guests dictate messages as telegrams.

Another great steampunk idea is to have guests sign an old vintage travelling trunk. Filled with your worldly possessions, you’ll be ready for airship adventures!

Pumpkin Patch

At your halloween wedding, have your guests carve their names into a pumpkin, and take a photo of them all lit up. How wicked would that be? Give out a prize to the most artistic pumpkin.

Horrible Guests

Buy a calico zombie doll, and have your guests sign that. Awesome!

Recipe Guest Book

On your wedding invitation, ask each guest to bring a favorite family recipe. Compile these recipes into your own family cookbook. You could even have the book printed through Lulu, and give copies back to your relatives for birthdays and Christmas.

I hope I’ve inspired you with a few alternative wedding guestbook ideas. Remember, a guest book is meant to be a memento for your wedding reception, so choose one you’ll be able to hold onto forever.

The wedding cake – the centrepiece of the evening’s festivities. The sight the first greets your guests as they enter the reception hall. The towering effigy of fondant and buttercream. For the alternative bride, a wedding cake doesn’t have to be a tiered bundle of white and pink icing flowers – she can have skulls and bats and cobwebs and polka dots and crooked cakes and chainsaw massacres and anything she wants! Given these stunning beauties, it’s a wonder any couple choose to go with the old school white tower anymore.

I’ve been compiling a file of wedding cake inspirations, so you shall be seeing many more cake inspiration posts over the next year. I may even be taking a cake decorating course in August, so you might see some of my own lopsided creations making their way onto the blog.

You might not know this, but my favorite part of wedding planning isn’t the dresses, or the invitations, or the photography – it’s the wedding cakes. And gothic / halloween wedding cakes absolutely WIN when it comes to unique, beautiful cake designs.

I share with you now a few pictures from my internet perusings. I don’t have sources for any of these pictures, so if you know from whence they came, please let me know so I can correctly attribute these talented cake designers.

Will you be having a gothic or halloween wedding cake? What have you chosen as an inspiration? Would you like to see MORE pictures of beautiful gothic wedding cakes? (I have more. So many more.)

Lots of Skully Brides and Grooms celebrating Halloween by getting hitched. For your pleasure, links to some of the awesomest Halloween wedding bling around the web:

Offbeat Bride has been featuring Halloween Weddings all month long: You might recognise the couple getting married at this Haunted Heavy Metal Viking Wedding of Epicness.

What do you think of this story? An Elmsford couple’s Halloween Wedding was not allowed at Sleepy Hollow church. On the one hand, I always think it’s sad when people misinterpret gothic / Halloween weddings as jokes, and the people that choose them as Satanists. On the other hand, if you’re having a wedding in a church, even a church in a haunted town, you should really discuss your décor / music ideas with the clergymen in charge of said church when you choose the place, rather than spring them on him so close to your wedding day.

A non-scary Halloween wedding. Not the usual “fall” theme. I loved this.

Via Intimate Weddings, a Halloween wedding in New Orleans. Every guest is wearing a beautiful costume!

Details about a wedding held in a funeral home. Sadly lacking in pictures, however, their pumpkin wedding cake is to die for.

Another photoless Halloween Wedding blog feature. Lots of cool ideas though.

Inspired by This has a tribute to Halloween Wedding Details. Inspiring stuff!

CakeWrecks Sunday Sweets feature amazing cakes (as opposed to the usual horrific ones). Check out her Halloween cakes this year. She’s also done a Sunday Sweets post on Twilight Cakes.

Halloween Reception Room video.

Another Halloween Reception.

A spider web wedding cake, from Mike and Brooke Jones’s Halloween wedding.

Happy Halloween everybody – I hope you all had a spooky weekend. CDH and I celebrated our 1 year anniversary on Sunday, with an exchange of gifts (Pandora beads and a book on building model trains), a pub lunch, looking at houses to rent, a kick ass bbq hosted by friends, cupcakes, “eyeballs”, cardboard guitars, silly talk, and a Halloween gig to top it off.

I’m happy to announce the winners of the Halloween Competition are Darkangelwingz and Malice Ann – a copy of the Halloween Wedding Planner is winging it’s way to you ladies today!

I’m behind on work, blogging and writing at the moment, and I’m desperately searching for a place for CDH and I to live. Posts here might be sparse until I can get my life back on track.

Have a Skully day!
Steff

Halloween approaches – the best time of the year! To celebrate here at Wedding Skulls, I’m pleased to announce the First Annual Halloween Competition, which runs all week until the 31st.

Win one of two copies of Halloween Wedding Planner Ebook.

To enter, you just need to comment on this post – tell me your favorite thing about Halloween. If you blog, twit, stumble, Digg or Facebook about the WeddingSkulls Halloween Competition, include a link in your comment and I’ll give you an extra entry.

Remember, you only have till Halloween, so comment away!