Weddingbee Blog

I seriously thought Mr. D and I were just going to be able to show up at the church with our pretty clothes, filled-hearts, a couple of rings, and call it a day. I had no idea everything that is involved with a ceremony. Well, I kind of did, but I just assumed it got done and I wouldn’t have to really do anything. We have figured out our ceremony, our vows, our music, and now we are trying to figure out whether or not to do programs.

Now, I already took the time to design programs. They are super cute too, but it’s the printing that is becoming discouraging. I think it’s simply going to be too much time and money to print them and assemble them. I just don’t know if they are worth it. Like I said last time, our ceremony is only going to be 30 minutes long with no frills. It’s only close friends and family, so everyone knows everyone (or of everyone) for the most part. I don’t know if it’s worth printing out programs that are only going to be looked at for all of 30 seconds and then tossed aside.

Our programs were going to be similar to this:

Image via Hello Tenfold

I wanted something dainty and simplistic. Our program ended up being about 6 pages long and I began to wonder it was necessary to actually make a program that was that long. I began to break down the contents of the program to decide whether or not they were necessary. First was the order of the ceremony. Obviously, people like to know what to expect at a wedding. Are they in for a 30 minute ceremony or a full Catholic mass? However, we can very easily remedy this a la Mrs. Sloth style:

Image Via Weddingbee’s Mrs. Sloth / Photography by Morrissey Photo

If we can get a chalkboard big enough, we will be able to not only write down the order of the ceremony, but also the wedding party as well! Plus, the project would cost us the price of a frame (plus, Mr. D’s mom owns an antique shop and has plenty we could pilfer borrow) and not stress us out over the printing and everything else!

Slight downside: we were also planning on including a section about our loved ones who couldn’t be with us and a section on how to get to the reception hall. Hrm. That’s a little much to stick all on one chalkboard.

I kind of have figured out the memory section, should we go this route. I am also planning on doing a memory table at the reception full of frames of our loved ones and candles, much like what Weddingbee hive member Ginger87 did at her wedding:

Image via Weddingbee boards

Instead of including the written information in our program, I could make an extra frame to go on the table at the reception. I was really liking the chalkboard idea when I realized that there was one big piece of information that I really wanted to make sure that the guests received: the reception information. We are having all of this information on the website, but I wanted to give the guests something day of that included the address and directions to the site as well as shuttle and taxi information. The hotel that we are blocking our rooms at offers a free shuttle service to and from the reception site for all of the guests staying at that particular hotel. Which is great considering our open bar. For those who choose to stay somewhere else, I wanted to make sure they had information for the local taxi services so they could utilize those instead. Just when I was going to just give in, Mr. D offered a solution. We could print just that information out on card stock and place it in a basket near our exiting apparatuses (still a secret for now!) and people could grab those when they grabbed the objects-which-must-not-be-named. So I took that part of our finished programs and did these:

Image via Miss Doily

Voila! I was saved! We are going to print these bad boys out and mat them on different patterned scrapbooking paper to give it a more whimsical and put together look. So now Mr. D and I are on the lookout for the perfect frame to turn into our ceremony chalkboard. As soon as I have results I will let you all know! I am just glad to be doing something other than paper programs, and not having to worry about the logistics and costs of printing out 100 programs and putting them together!

Did you do a project only to doubt it? Did you stick with it or go with your gut and do something else? Did you or are you going to do something unique or fun for your programs?