Ceremony – Program Booklet

The idea for a wedding program came from a couple of ideas. The main one was a desire to include my parents somehow. There would be guests who didn’t know where they were, so I wanted a way to explain it all and commemorate them at the same time.

We also wanted to get some form of “who’s who” is there so people knew the wedding party. There were a couple of messages and thank you’s we wanted to include as well. That filled a couple of pages. It wasn’t going to be a big call-and-response ceremony, so there was no need to have a ceremony order included.

When creating booklets like this, you have to think in terms of groups of four pages, assuming you are going to fold sheets and staple them to create the finished article. We didn’t want just a single folded sheet (four pages), so we had to make what we had cover eight pages. We didn’t want to push it over eight, because that would mean we had to jump to twelve, and we just didn’t have the content. So that’s how we came up with amusing extras and did-you-knows.

Take a look:

[scribd id=60030145 key=key-11tbkr0i6l5rk6awxdh2 mode=list]

I put a lot of work into this, so let’s take it page by page.

Page 1
I created this using graphical elements nicked from the invitation proof. The colors are the same, and I found the correct fonts. It won’t win any awards, but it works.

Page 2
A couple of cute and amusing photos of us as children. I’m wearing my tie from Parkwood Middle School. Don’t look for it, it’s not there any more.

Page 3
These are some lovely bits from Sarah, Robin and Taylor – the Maid of Honor, Best Man and Officiant respectively.

Page 4
US-UK Translations. Very funny stuff. We nearly put a wordsearch in here to give the guests something to do at the ceremony.

(I wanted cut out masks of Cassie and I, so we could look out at our audience and see a sea of our own faces looking back, with the eyeholes crudely torn out. That idea was put “on the back burner”. It’s still there.)

Page 5
Message to my Mum & Dad, accompanied by a photo of them on their wedding day, March 29 1958. I think it hit the spot.

Page 6
Some cute little facts, and an important message about our support for gay marriage.

Page 7
Long, long list of thank-yous. Thank you again to all of you/them!

Page 8
I did the graphics for this too. Took the graphic for the front of the sign, reversed it, and then replaced the text. I found a photo of the back of the real sign, did a trace in Inkscape, then cleaned it up and assembled the final graphic.

Can you guess what the numbers at the bottom of the page mean? They’re also laser-etched on the inside of my wedding ring. The numbers are: 51.52684177168035, -0.07808446884155273. There’s a prize for the first correct answer.

Verdict: It was a lot of fun making this, and I think many people will have kept their program as a souvenir. Recommended.

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Categorized as Wedding