Wish Jars

I came across an article on BridalBuds.com about guestbook alternatives, and I took a second to think about why the guestbook exists.

A guestbook is a paper or electronic means for a visitor to acknowledge their visitation to a site, physical or web-based, and leave their name, postal or electronic address (if desired), and a comment or note, if desired.
--Wikipedia.org

You already know the names of the people you invited to your wedding, and if you sent out invitations, you already have their address… Hmm. The guestbook seems a bit superfluous!

More and more couples are opting out of the guestbook tradition, and I completely understand why! Here’s what ends up happening: You order a journal-like book that has 100+ pages and only a few of the pages end up being used. You are left with something that is definitely sentimental, but hardly used! After my wedding, I used some of the extra pages in my guestbook to record gifts that people gave me, but I still have about 75% of my guestbook unused. So why not explore other ideas??

One option I really like is the “wish jar”.

{Source: this image is from MarthaStewart.com, but I grabbed it from BridalBuds.com & can't find the original Martha link!}

As I stated above, I saw this idea on BridalBuds.com and thought it was so cute! Your guests can write sweet notes on cardstock (or whatever) and you can later take the notes and put them in a scrapbook (after your honeymoon, of course!). The author of the article takes it up a notch and is going to have Polaroid cameras by the wish jar so guests can take photos of themselves when they submit their wishes! How awesome!

What’s great about this idea is that you can DEFINITELY make this happen yourself. Go buy a pretty apothecary jar, birdcage, basket or other type of container; cut up some squares of paper (the BridalBuds author used left-over paper from her invitations – yay for re-using!); make some sort of sign that tells your guests what the wish jar is and what it’s for; set out some pens and you’re set!

{Source}