When planning your wedding ceremony, wedding programs should be on the top of your list.

Before the reception hall is reserved, the church selected and the gift registry chosen, photography, flower girl, bridal favors and catering imagined, you will need to condense all of those little checklists written on odd scraps of paper into one concise program, almost like a script for a movie. The following are factors to keep in mind.

Creating Your Wedding Program

This script you come up with is what will evolve into the wedding programs you’ll design and print on beautiful paper to hand out to family and friends gathered for this joyous occasion.

The longer your guest list and the more elaborate the ceremony and series of events, blessings, family traditions and customs you want to observe, the more important it is to have all these printed in the wedding programs so all the guests can have cameras ready to capture every magic moment. Listing the names of the wedding party and anyone scheduled ahead of time to give a speech, read a poem or sing a song, will help everyone present know who these people are. Remember to include their relationship to the bride and groom so that throughout the day people from different families and groups of friends can get to know one another and make their own introductions.

These will all merit separate pages in the program. For instance: “The Wedding Party” with all those names and relations is one page, “The Wedding Ceremony” would be another with the order and time of each event included. One page could list the other participants such as readers, musicians and toast makers. Should someone wish to read a short poem that is important to each of you, you may want to print it on a separate page. There may also be loved ones who have passed away or were unable to attend, to whom you may want to make a dedication or otherwise remember.

Your wedding ceremony and reception may have a theme that runs through all the events and is reflected in the wedding programs. A beach wedding may have a paradisal flavor with tiki torches and flower leis. Your wedding programs could then have palm trees and sea shells on the borders. Perhaps you’ll create a fairy tale wedding complete with coach and horses, candles, incense, a prince and princess, and a shower of rose petals. The pages could be printed with Gothic script on parchment-like paper.

Typically the programs are handed out to arriving guests by an usher or older child. Often they are simply left in a stack at the entrance or placed one to each chair. When your beloved friends and family open the beautiful wedding programs you have designed, they will immediately get a sense of the vision you have for this most special of all days.