.our guest tree.

planning our wedding was no easy undertaking and not for the normal reasons you may be thinking. sure, weddings are a lot of pressure, but when you're as neurotic as i am about details and uniqueness, they're even more complex. luckily, we had a long engagement that allowed me to indulge in many diy projects.

while we decided to skip some of the traditional parts of the wedding, we kept others. then, there were those traditional parts that we just made more 'us.' one such thing was the guest book. usually, a guest book is, well, a book. it allows all of a couple's wedding attendants to sign to live forever in wedding legacy. raise your hand if you own such a book and get it out ever to read through the names.

i'm willing to bet there weren't a lot of hands raised out there. with this in mind, i wanted our guests, the most important people in our lives, to be remembered in a special way. and in enters the wedding guest tree concept.

growing up in an oak hammock, a neighborhood with other children was only a concept on sitcom tv. my neighbors had their arms outstretched not too far from the sky with a sturdiness perfect for whenever i needed to lean upon them. with my roots planted firmly amidst all those trees, my fondness towards them has traveled with me throughout my life.

so, it was a perfect pairing for one of our wedding elements to include a tree. we incorporated the longstanding concept of a family tree into our guest book because our guests were the people we wanted in our lives forever.

by grabbing a blank canvas and some paint, i figured i'd automatically become an artist. although my mother is one, i never inherited her talents. so, when i began tracing out an embarrassing halloween-looking tree upon my coarse gold background, my frustrations started kicking in. in my mind, i knew exactly what i wanted, but was unable to translate that to the canvas. so, my hubby-to-be stepped in to help.

together, we created our tree. and isn't that how it should have been? here we are on the verge of creating this ever after life together. a tree symbolizes life and it's roots, blossoms, extensions and making that together only brought us closer. although neither of us are joining the art world any time soon, the outcome was the concept we were going for.

for the wedding itself, i had picked out two different green inks for our guests to 'leaf' their fingerprint. with their signature underneath in fine point sharpie, they'd forever be part of our home. dustin and i added our prints and names first to have our friends and family branch out from there. i thought it was sweet when my new niece put hers right next to mine.

now that we're married, this meaningful piece sits in our living room atop our bookshelf. it, like all the wonderful memories from our wedding day, will be with us forever.


*all photos, except the last one, by swept away studios