Weddingbee

As mentioned before, our Nikkah ceremony was last week, and I had been running around like a “chicken without a head” (<-how did that phrase ever come about). Anyhow, I guess I’d share one of the simpler, yet last minute, DIY projects that I undertook.

For the Nikkah reception, I wanted to create a small ceremony program that guests could refer to for questions about the night’s events, instead of them having to ask the waiters what time dinner would be served. Hmm… well, I guess that would be a reception, not a ceremony program, wouldn’t it ? Nonetheless, since our Nikkah started out with an official ceremony in a mosque, followed by a reception in a nearby restaurant, one option we were considering was giving out programs before the ceremony. However, we figured it might not be a good idea because people tend to lose things when moving between sites/venues.

So, we have decided to keep a simple, and straight-forward program tucked into the napkins on the tables at the reception, along with the wedding favors and silverware. Easy enough, right? Nope! We seem to have very eclectic guests who are either poets, singers, speakers, or just simply lovers of the limelight and feel the need to embrace it. Hence, we were told that there needed to be some cultural element to our ceremony program. Some of the things that we felt should be included in our programs were:

a) readings from scripture (both in Arabic, and a translation)
b) speeches from groomsmen and bridesmaids
c) poetry from a guest (uninvited submission)
d) songs… possibly…
e) entrance of bride
f) entrance of groom
g) dinner
h) introduction of family (especially OOTers)
i) welcoming of guests

In addition, we wanted to add a small poem, possibly in English, Urdu (A Language of Pakistan), and Arabic (A Language of Egypt).

For the design, I opted to use 5×8 cardstock and decided to use the following color palette, which matched some of the elements of our wedding decor:

As far as the design program of choice, even though many have advised me to use InDesign or Illustrator to make my life easier, I am a Photoshop freak so I decided to work with what’s familiar to me. I began drafting our ceremony layout by using some freeware photoshop brushes and creating the following backgrounds:

The winning background was #2. Would you have gone with this one as well?

I then began messing around, trying to make up some sort of monogram/logo with our names. I came up with the following simple result:

Next, Ms. Mango and I came up with the following program schedule:

7:30-8:00 Guest Arrival
7:30-8:30 Appetizers
8:10 Welcome Address
8:15 Groom Entrance
8:30 Bridal Entrance
8:45-10:15 Dinner & Pictures
8:55-9:30 Speeches
9:45 Bouquet Toss
10:00 Cake Cutting
10:05-10:30 Speeches
10:15-11:30 Dessert

We wanted to give a lot of time for our guests to enjoy their food, yet not have that as the center of focus for our reception program. Therefore, we have decided to have the speeches spread out throughout the dinner and dessert times. We used a wireless mic and had it passed from table to table where one of our friends would hopefully be seated. The tally was up to 10-11 speeches about 2-3 minutes long. I know that is a lot of people with a lot to say, but how could we say no to all our friends wanting to say a few words at this very special event?

You might notice that we refer to ourselves as the bride and groom when this event isn’t our large wedding event. This is because, in our culture/religion, we are actually married after this event. However, we kind of see it as a permanent commitment to each other, and view our “Walima” ceremony as the actual wedding. Now that I have you all confused, let’s move on.

Here’s the kicker. So Papa Mango promised Ms. Mango that he would find a poem to put on the ceremony program. After weeks of nagging Papa Mango, I finally got a page out of a book of poetry by the famous Pakistani poet, Allama Iqbal, more commonly referred to as “Iqbal”. Anyhow, I scanned in the page from the book, so that I could have some text in Urdu, the national language of Pakistan. That, and the script looks very cool. After scanning it in, I used the “Live Trace” function in Adobe Illustrator (Thanks Flamingo!), and placed the vectorized result in my photoshop layout.

The next step was to get the translation, which was…. interesting. What I received from Papa Mango was the following :

In reality, you cannot be matched
The only one in my sight
You are the thing in the mind,
and in the heart
Victimized by your magical eyes
How did I enter in this love
Which has put me through
this desire and pain ?

At this point, my face shriveled like a prune. Victimized…?….pain….?…..ugh. I then called up Papa Mango and went over each line again. We finally agreed that this was more appropriate:

In reality, you are matchless
The only one in my sight
You are the only one on my mind,
and in my heart
Captured by your magical eyes
How did I enter in this
state of silent longing
Which has put me through
this desire and wait ?

This is where I would suggest finding a pre-translated version of a foreign poem, if you decide to add such an element to your program.

So, the final program looked like this:

I went ahead and printed 250 of these on 5×8″ index cards (<–super cheap) on an HP Color Laserjet 4600.

The next step was getting my cousins and sis Mango to begin folding and ironing 250 gold napkins to accommodate the programs.

The programs were then inserted in every napkin and stored for the day of the event. The staff at our venue was nice enough to let us have 250 napkins a week before the event.

Overall, I think they turned out quite well and were actually used at the event, as shown in the pro pic below. It was the easiest, and simplest DIY project that we undertook for the Nikkah ceremony, and sort of nice way to add your own personal touch to your event.

Picture Source

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