Wednesday's Wedding Poll: Guest Book

I have a confession to make. I really hate to be negative about stuff like this..but here it is:

I don't like our engagement pictures.

There, I said it. I don't hate them. I "like" them...they're ok...there's a small handful of good ones that I feel I can use, but as a whole...if I could redo the whole entire thing, I would in a second. I had gotten to a point where I just wanted them done and over with, and didn't really mentally prepare for the whole thing.

1. I hate what I'm wearing: I was determined to find a new shirt to wear. So I bought one the day before that I had never worn and it was "eh". I wanted to have a real "casual, we look great without even trying" look, and instead I feel like we were trying too hard to be "casual"...if that makes any sense at all. Sounds crazy..but it makes sense in my head. I really wish I had dressed up more and worn a skirt or a dress. I would have felt much more comfortable and "pretty" in them. I also should have done a few outfit changes throughout the day.

2. We took our pictures on literally...and I'm not even exaggerating here...the hottest day of summer 2010. I was sweaty, gross, my hair frizzed out, and I was so uncomfortable the whole time. Add that to the fact that I had gained some summer weight. Whether anyone notices or not, as long as you know you're not at your ideal weight, it's going to bother you...we all know that. I didn't "feel" pretty and that completely manifested into "most" of our photos.

3. I was under the false impression that the photographer comes up with the ideas to "set the stage" for pictures. That may be true for some photographers, but it's also up to you to come with specific ideas and props you may want to use. They're not going to read your mind. It had never even occurred to me to prepare props to incorporate into our pictures and bring them along. I could have gotten really creative with some Wagner ideas....sigh.

I want to stress that I'm not saying this so anyone comments saying "OMG BUT THEY WERE SO GOOD!" That's not my purpose in stating this at all. I got one or two great photos from our shoot...and really, that's all I needed for save-the-dates and other things.

As you can tell from my banner, this was my favorite picture from the day:

So yay, that's fine. I've moved on. So the reason for me confessing this leads to our guest book. I really don't want to make a guest book with our engagement pictures on shutterfly.com or blurb.com. That was my original intent, and I love the guest books that I've seen so far from these sites, but I just can't bring myself to make a whole book of pictures I don't really love.

So I took to Wedzu.com and Etsy.com to help me figure out what exactly I wanted. The first one I liked was on Etsy in ModernShabby's shop. She does custom guest books, and has a lot of options to chose from. This one immediately caught my eye because it's already in our wedding colors:

Modern Shabby

Here's another one from her shop: she can customize them any way you like.

Modern Shabby

 She has a TON of different fabrics to chose from:

This one caught my eye, I liked the color combination and even though I LOVE the one above, I kind of wanted to get away from the black/green/white theme for everything:

I've emailed the shop owner and she will include our customized calligraphy on the cover tag, which would be a great way to incorporate that artwork! The only drawback with this one is it comes with 30 pages and I'll have to purchase about 50 additional pages. Though I'm not sure at what cost, I think this will end up being a bit pricier than my option below.

Next I found this one in Red Otter's shop at Wedzu.com.

Wedzu.com Red Otter - Lemon Blossom Guest Book

I love the tie, I love how simple it is, I love the colors, and it comes with 80 pages instead of 30, and she'll add 20 more for free if I feel I'll need more.

Not customizable, and won't have our calligraphy on the cover...but it is perfectly lovely the way it is. 

You can probably tell which one I'm leaning toward for ease's sake, but I'm still really debating. Tell me, what do you think? Should I go with the fully customized one on Etsy, which will also include our calligraphy design? Or just go with the wedzu.com one that I won't have to design or make any changes to? Is there one you love more than the other? Thanks for your input!