Kitschy DIY guestbook table with flower pen favors

This idea is perfect for a fun springtime wedding! Picture it: the table is covered in green grass, and guests can “pick” a flower pen, use it to sign your guestbook, and then keep the pen as a wedding favor!

Materials Needed:

• fake flowers — Fake flowers are pretty easy to find at thrift stores (consider buying them there to recycle materials)
• floral tape
• pens
• tags
• string
• fake grass — enough to cover your tabletop 1.5 times (I got mine here)
• wire cutters
• hole punch
• scissors
• utility knife

Step 1 — Prepare Your Tags
We used this grass tabletop/flower pen idea in our Whitney Lee Photography wedding expo booth (we give away the flower pens as swag) so my tags have the Whitney Lee Photography logo. For yours you may want to use your wedding logo and wedding date.

Print your tags onto cardstock. They should be no larger than 2.5″ in any direction. Cut the tags to size and use your hole punch to cut a hole in the top left corner. Cut a piece of string about 5″ long. Tie the string to your tag so that the two ends of the string are the same length.

Step 2 — Prepare your flowers

Fake flowers often come as part of an entire fake plant — or at least a fake bouquet. All you really need are the flower heads and about 1.5 to 2 inches of stem. Using wire cutters, trim off the useful flower parts and discard the rest.

Step 3 — Assemble your flower pens

Examine your floral tape. Notice how stretchy it is! As you wrap your pen it is important to keep the tape taught.

Put the stem of your flower against the end of your pen.

Wind the floral tape around the stem and pen two to three times until they are pretty securely stuck together. Notice that one side of the floral tape is slightly stickier than the other — it is important to keep the sticky side down.

Without ripping the floral tape, hold the string of your tag up near the top of the pen.

Keep winding the tape around the pen and stem and string, slowly spiraling down the length of the pen.

Once the whole pen is covered in the green tape, you are finished. Simply rip the floral tape and the end will stick up against the pen.

Step 4 — Fake Grass

Using a utility knife, cut your fake grass so that it exactly covers your table top.

With your extra grass, cut smaller strips, eight to ten inches wide, that cover the width of your table top. These strips will hold your flower pen favors. Having your flower pens in this extra grass (as opposed to the grass on the tabletop) will help protect your tabletop from pen marks, it will help your grass lay flat, and it will help make assembly easier.

Also using your utility knife, cut holes into the strips of grass.

Those holes become the spots where you poke the pens through.

Once the pens are in the grass, just put the grass on the table in a way that suits you!

On my table I also put some pictures of Chico and I, and the open guestbook. To help guests know to “pick” the flowers, I recommend you display some signage!