Weddingbee

After our Seattle Weddingbee meet up in July, I stopped by the Paper Source in Bellevue to brainstorm programs. We had in mind that we wanted to just print two long rectangular pages on cover stock, round the corners, punch holes in them, and secure them with ribbon. That would have been simple enough, but Paper Source tempted me with pre-punched khaki-colored backings (available in packs of 25 for $10) that would save me the hassle of buying a corner-rounder and the time of rounding 200 corners. Yes!

I got a couple packs of the khaki backings, some 8.5″ x 11″ paper in Luxe Cream, chocolate brown ribbon, and a tiny hole punch. I was all set to go.

I decided to make only 50 programs for our guests because there are only 76 people in the audience when the wedding party is taken into consideration. My guess is that not everyone will want a program, and that most couples will share.

First, I created a simple layout in Adobe InDesign:

The first page thanks our friends and family and lists the wedding participants. The second page lists the order of the ceremony and activities following.

You could easily make this layout in another design program, or possibly even MS Word. However, I recommend using something that is more suitable for creating non-standard sized pages, and that allows for crop marks to make it easier to cut the paper when you’re finished. I had a hard enough time, even with InDesign, marking the exact area to cut between the two pages of our program.

I printed 50 copies of our program pages, cut them with a paper cutter, and set aside the two pages in separate stacks.

Then, Mr. CP and I sat down for an evening of Buffy season 5 on DVD, and punched us some holes!

We took two pages, lined them up neatly with each other, and positioned them on the backing where we wanted them. We then marked through the top two holes of the backing with a pencil, and punched holes where we’d marked.

After we’d punched all 50 programs, we set to tying them with square knots. For this, we used about 8 inches of narrow, brown ribbon (which was just 3.3 feet more than our 30 foot spool, ARGH!), tied the knots, and cut the corners clean. If you want to tie tiny bows, I’d recommend at least 11-12 inches of ribbon, to be safe.

The finished products look quite nice… clean, and simple. They’ll be set in a dark brown wicker basket with the instruction to take one per couple.

Are you using pre-fab program templates or making your own? What do yours look like?

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