Weddingbee Blog

Many people instructed me to make half as many wedding programs as guests. They were absolutely right. I had 180 guests at the wedding and I crafted 110 wedding programs, yet still ended up with a handful left over. I remember right before I walked down the aisle, I passed by my basket of wedding programs and saw that it was still half full, which made me very sad. All that hard work and no takers. Well, people must have taken them home as keepsakes after the ceremony was over because when our coordinator gave us back our supplies, there were only five programs left!

The process of making our programs was so fun! I edited the graphics in Adobe Illustrator and used InDesign for the page layout, which made everything a breeze. Our family and bridal party all got involved and it was truly a labor of love.  

 
Here, our friends are lovingly helping us assemble everything during the week before the wedding. That’s my dad’s guitar on the right. He loves playing and collecting guitars. I think he has six in his collection so far.

Here, Mr. Eggplant is lovingly punching holes and tying the programs together. Unfortunately he tied them together with all of the pages out of order.
And here, I am lovingly undoing and fixing all of Mr. Eggplant’s hard work.
These were the covers of our programs, stamped and embossed.

All of my wedding projects were birthed from previous bees. I knew I wanted to use vellum in my programs but didn’t know how, until I saw Mrs. Emerald’s gorgeous programs. She had the wonderful idea of using vellum as an overlay for her engagement picture. Perfect!

Papa Eggplant took this picture of us. Mr. Eggplant made the shirts for us a long time ago for one of our annual trips to Disneyland. His shirt says “chocolate” and mine, “mango.” Long story, but chocolate mango is a running analogy for us. It was born during a conversation we had while on a date at an ice cream shop. We were eating chocolate and mango gelato flavors at the time.

First spread: Our program included a letter to our guests that opened with, “Dear beloved friends and family, In case you did not know, today, October 20th, 2007 is a national holiday. It’s called ‘The Sweetest Day,’ an occasion that is celebrated every third Saturday in October.” I thought it was so cute that our wedding day happened to fall on The Sweetest Day. We didn’t plan it at all when we booked the date and only found out a few months before the wedding. It was a very sweet surprise that became a mini theme for our candy buffet and favors.

Second spread: The wedding participants.

Third spread: The order of the ceremony. This was a bit hard for me. I had to refer back to many programs from other weddings that I had before creating our timeline. If you guys want a copy of our timeline as an example, let me know and I’ll post it up.

Fourth spread: The song lyrics for our worship selections.

Fifth spread: We had an hour and a half break between the ceremony and cocktail hour. I didn’t want our guests to be bored, so I created a walking map of downtown Palo Alto and listed some things to do. Included were ice cream shops, cafes, and my favorite boutiques. The map actually came in handy because our guests visited some of our recommendations before cocktail hour.

Sixth spread: We gave thanks to all the wedding helpers on the left page. On the right we outlined the order of formal portraits to be taken after the ceremony. Very helpful!

And here is the last page with the back of our shirts. Mine says “loves chocolate” and his says “loves mango.”