This week, we got an interesting request from Emma, one of our clients in New Zealand who runs a wedding planning business. She wanted us to source a “vintage telephone that can record voice messages.” At first, we honestly thought it was merely a decorative piece placed on a table at weddings.Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Ut elit tellus, luctus nec ullamcorper mattis, pulvinar dapibus leo.
But once we started researching it, we realized this is actually a booming product in the US, UK, and Australia. And the price point is surprisingly high, with most orders above $200. On Google search trends, “Audio Guest Book” barely appeared before 2021, then started shooting up in 2022 and quickly became a fast-growing category of its own.
The Rise of a Breakout Wedding Product
As we went deeper into the audio guest book category, we realized it didn’t explode overnight. It grew step by step, from validating demand to launching physical products and opening up the market.
Who first spotted the hidden demand?
The earliest version came from a company called Life on Record. Their service was simple. You call a dedicated number, leave a message, and their system turns all the recordings into a keepsake audio file. It wasn’t created specifically for weddings, but more and more users started bringing it into weddings, receptions, and engagement parties. That shift confirmed something important for the market: people were willing to use a vintage phone to capture personal memories, and they were willing to pay for it.
Who created the first product?
Then came FêteFone, the first to turn it into a physical product.They modified a retro phone so that lifting the handset started recording and putting it back saved the file. The concept finally became something planners could place at an event and guestscould use it immediately. FêteFone sold its phones at around 299 to 399 dollars, and the audio retrieval options, such as file unlocking or USB delivery, created extra revenue beyond the device itself.
Who turned it into a fast-growing wedding category?
The brand that truly pushed this category into the mainstream wedding space was After The Tone. Their website launched in 2021, with a clear focus on wedding events. They understood most people only get married once, so spending hundreds to buy a phone recorder isn’t practical. A rental model was the natural choice.
With a few thousand phones in inventory, they could cover events across the country. A single rental was $299 per event, including the audio editing service, and customers returned the phone within three days. The model scaled fast. Today, After The Tone has completed more than 30,000 events, and their website search volume and online visibility make them the most recognizable brand in the category.
How to Stand Out in This Market
Deliver a complete experience
It was the entire experience wrapped around it. Once the market started accepting the idea of an audio guest book, the smarter sellors quickly realized something important: couples weren’t looking for a reusable recording phone. They want a complete wedding audio experience.
And yes, most brands have now added the obvious extras: custom names or logos, personalized voicemail greetings, remote submissions, audio editing, online playback pages, vinyl keepsakes, USB packages, and wedding-day display signs. But the real difference comes down to who can make the whole journey feel the most complete, the easiest, and the most user-centered.
Because after the wedding, the couple ends up with dozens, sometimes more than a hundred, separate voice notes. Who’s going to turn all of that into one meaningful, story-driven “Wedding Voice Story”? After The Tone does this for free, which makes their rental model feel natural and frictionless. And once that core pain point is solved, it becomes effortless to upsell things like vinyl records or other keepsakes. It all flows from the same experience.
Educate the market better than anyone else
Their marketing follows the same logic. Instead of only promoting the service, they share emotional wedding recordings and actively educate the market. They explain when guests are most likely to leave heartfelt messages: during cocktail hour, right after speeches, before dinner, or in those small quiet moments between events.
They even solved a hidden wedding pain point by giving “Irish Goodbye” guests (the ones who leave quietly) a less awkward way to leave a message. Their SEO marketing content even includes detailed wedding instruction cards and on-site tips, all reinforcing the same principle: the easier you make the experience, the more real and meaningful messages you will capture. Guests do not feel like they are dealing with a recording device. To them, it feels as natural as making a quick phone call.
Is This Easy to Source and Sell?
Whether it is a finished product or a rental, most orders start at over $250. The price seems pretty high. After all, it looks like nothing more than a telephone-shaped recorder with a battery. We checked online and found people trying to tear it apart and even build open-source versions. There is a full one-hour tutorial on YouTube.
The hardware itself isn’t much of a challenge. On Amazon, there are plenty of under-$100 versions already selling, and some of the newer models even include video recording. The best-selling listings move around 300 to 400 units a month, almost all using the popular GPO-style design that first appeared two or three years ago. On Alibaba, the pattern is almost identical, with most suppliers concentrated in Shenzhen, the world’s largest electronics manufacturing hub. This type of product is straightforward to make.
But the true barrier in this business isn’t the phone at all. It’s the service layer built around it. Audio editing, personalized keepsakes, on-site setup and styling, handling equipment issues, guiding guests, managing files, providing support… these soft, experience-driven elements are what actually make the business work.
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