Wedding guests can add the gift of gab when 'signing' an audio guestbook
There's a new twist on the guestbook at a wedding or other event
NEW YORK — The bridal couple can't come to the phone right now. They're busy getting married. Please leave your well wishes at the beep!
Capturing recorded messages on vintage phones is the latest twist to the wedding guestbook. Couples who have embraced them said guests had a ball, returning to the phones again and again as their weddings unfolded.
“It felt a little bit more personal. You could hear the inflection in people’s voices and they were genuinely having a good time. You can hear what they're excited about and what they enjoyed about the wedding,” said Nick Gaines, who married last September in Chicago.
The market is crowded with companies offering the phones for purchase or rent, from fancy 1920s-era looks to rotaries from the ‘50s and ’60s. One vendor, FêteFone, offers a phone in the shape of pink lips and another shaped like a cheeseburger.
Some rental companies provide related services like noise reduction, and mini speakers and vinyl records for playback.
Gaines and his wife used LifeOnRecord, a rental service that’s been around since 2006. Its prices range from $99 for a toll-free, call-in number and online portal open for a year, to $299 for a phone on site with a battery pack good for 12 hours. Guests need only pick up the handset, listen to an introductory greeting from the couple and leave a message.
The phones play into a broader interest in recent years in all things retro in fashion, decor and housewares.
For several years, weddings have been LifeOnRecord's most popular events, though people also use the company for an array of things, from terminally ill patients whose loved ones want to record memories to birthdays, bar mitzvahs
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