105: Passport Wedding Guestbook

A few months before my brother Adam’s wedding, he called me up and said he wanted me to make something for him (Little did he know I was already making him a video). He said that his fiancée and he had been discussing what kind of guestbook they wanted, and they had decided I would be the one to make it. Adam assured me it could be my wedding present to them (Little did he know I was already growing a handlebar mustache for the wedding photos as a wedding present to him [OK, that was more of a sabotage than a present]).

But we discussed it over the phone, and I gradually figured out what they wanted. They wanted something that functioned like a guestbook but was able to be displayed like a piece of art. They wanted something that told the story of who they are as a couple and where they are going. And mostly they wanted something innovative and personal.

After asking some questions about their shared interests and histories, I sat down and thought about it for a long time. This is what I came up with.

It’s a giant passport. Both Kristin and Adam enjoy traveling, and their honeymoon is in Ireland. But it’s not just about travel.

This is the passport to their marriage.

Where the visas and stamps go, there are a bunch of empty stamps for guests to sign and to write a little note. Each guest is an important story in the lives of the couple.

They loved it.

And that’s not all.

Some of the destination stamps were not blank. Here are a couple of stamps that you can see, if you squint, have the names to their colleges in them.

There are also places like “Marriage” and “Happiness” and real countries they’ve been to.

In this picture, you can see the stamps of Ft. Worth (where they were married) and Grand Prairie (where my brothers and I grew up).

You can also see the mostly-accurate passport security background which was pretty difficult to recreate.

But wait there’s more! I printed it all on one sheet of paper so that it can unfold into a wall hanging for display purposes. So, I think I hit all of the requirements for the project.

(Side note: if you need to precisely fold something and you have access to a pool table, a butter knife, and a ruler, you’ll be a happy paper folder.)

When it was all signed, the project really came together. I had a lot of fun making this, and I even got to keep a bad copy that Kinko’s misprinted.

Feel free to check the accuracy against your personal passport.

See you next week (and Happy birthday, Blog).

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