Whew!  As the time is winding down towards our wedding, I am starting to feel the weight of my to-do list.  My major problem is that I keep adding unnecessary things to my to do list such as “make pinwheels for the kiddies”.  While I hope to get to the pinwheels (post coming soon), there are other things that just must get done and get done soon.

The above program is a from Etsy shop MTK Designs

One of those line items is that I need to create our programs.  Originally, I didn’t think that we were going to have programs, but then I thought of all the good reasons why programs are helpful…

1)       A keepsake not only for the bride and groom but also for the parents.

2)      It gives adults a rundown of what’s going to happen next and how many things have to happen before they can run over to the bar.  J

3)      It gives kids paper to draw on if they get bored.  Let’s face it…kids get bored, and programs are made of paper. 

4)      If it’s hot, the program serves as a fan.

5)      You can make the program fit into your wedding theme.

6)      If you and/or your fiancé do not especially care for the spotlight, it gives your guest something else to stare at rather than at you. 

So when I came to the conclusion that we’d be making programs, I thought to myself that at least I’d get to play around with the design and fonts and such.  I’m kind of a fontaholic.  I probably have at least five hundred fonts on my computer, and I’m always adding more.  You can get many for free at sites such as Dafont.com, which is where I found all the fonts for our invitations, programs, table numbers, etc. 

Anyhoo, once I had in mind the design and the fonts that I wanted to include, I became stuck.   What exactly goes into a program?  What do you have to have?  What is optional?  How should it be organized?  Here’s what I’ve gathered:

Things you might include: 

1)       There might be some sort of cover or title area where the full name of the couple, date, location, and maybe a monogram or design can be included.

2)      Generally speaking, the ceremony starts the wedding, and so the events of the ceremony should be listed next, possibly including: the prelude, seating of any important family members, vocal/music selections, processional, entrance of the bride, call to worship, statement of intent, prayer, scriptures/readings, charge to the couple, exchange of vows, exchange of rings, pronouncement of marriage, special parts of the ceremony (i.e. unity candle), blessing of the marriage, presentation of the couple, recessional, postlude, and a line inviting the guests to the reception. 

3)      A listing of the wedding party including:  your officiate, parents, grandparents, bridesmaids, flower girls, groomsmen, ring bearers, musicians, bell ringers, attendants, hosts/hostesses and possibly your wedding director and/or coordinator.  You may want to also list the relationship of your wedding party members to the couple. 

4)      A thank you to those who have helped or contributed to make your wedding day possible.

5)      Directions to the reception site.

6)      A dedication.

7)      Your new address.

8)      Special poems/scriptures/lyrics.

9)      Notes of interest.

10)   Explanations of special ceremonies.

11)   A brief story of how the couple met.

What you may NOT want to include:

1)       Generally, those who are paid vendors at a wedding are not thanked in a program, however, you may feel differently and can do as you please if you feel the need to thank people.

2)      Please do not mention anything about gifts, money trees, etc.  Not nice.

3)      Too much embellishment.  This is where I have problems as I love embellishments!  But keeping your program simple is probably a good idea.  Sigh…

4)      Keep away from hard to read ink colors especially if you are in a darker area.

My big mistake so far in this project is that I started to create our program before we’ve even settled on details for the ceremony.  So this weekend’s absolutely to do activity is to pick music and finalize the ceremony wording.  Then, I’ll keep strong and carry on with my fonts.  And embellishments.  I can’t help myself.  J

By the way!  A fantastic resource if you’re not sure about what to do for a program can be found on Martha Stewart’s Wedding site. 

Where do you see paper in the wedding spectrum?  Invitations, right?  Well of course, but just when you thought you had your invitations under control, people will start to ask you about other paper-al elements that may appear in and around your wedding.  Programs, escort cards, menus, etc....  Today's post takes the many printed elements that you might consider for your own wedding...

Rule of thumb for this post?  All these elements are optional!  Don't think to yourself, "My goodness, I don't have custom letterpress coasters printed for my guests!  I fail at weddings!"  No, no, dear friends, as always, your wedding is an extention of you, and YOU may not need or want some of these elements.  Then again, you may be greedy like me and want them all...  *sigh*.

Let's begin, shall we? 

Programs - This one is a biggie and pretty popular.  Often times found at the entry to the ceremony area or on the seats for your guests, a program gives your guests a play by play account of the day's events.  It may include a schedule, readings, names of family members and the wedding party, pictures, etc.  The program can be in the form of a booklet, flyer, printed fan, or some other fun object that has this info printed. 

Menus - Everyone will be interested in what they get to eat at your wedding, so a menu card is a nice gesture that will get your guests salivating.  Place them on each plate, each table, or just one big menu sign as guests enter the area. 

Escort Cards/Place Cards - These two cards are brother and sister in that the escort cards will show a guest which table they should go to, and a place card is placed at the seat of each guest to identify which place setting is theirs.  Sometimes you may want to do one or the other, both, or neither, depending on your seating needs.

Napkins and Other Personalized Items - You will definitely need napkins, and it is often the case that brides and grooms will have their name and date printed on napkins, matchbooks, pencils, candles, or other favors for their guests.

Here is a collage of pictures of various wedding paper products (including a custom letterpress coaster) that you can find on Etsy:

1. program fan by scrappinginnovations, 2. program handkerchief by artfulbeginnings, 3. program birds of a feather by paperthickink, 4. placecard candle by illumienate, 5. placecard on glass timelesspaper, 6. program fortune teller by katskrafts, 7. menu wrap by printyourparty, 8. napkins by bellabridedesigns, 9. lettepress coaster vintagescriptpress

Alright, all you paper-savvy people, what other paper wedding elements am I overlooking?  What else came in handy?  What else did you have printed?  Do tell in the message board! 

Really...I mean...really?  Why is a Save The Date even necessary?  For those of you who aren't familiar with that term, a Save the Date card is something that the bride and groom can choose to send about 6-8 months before the wedding to give invited guests the heads up about the wedding day.  

My original stance was that Save the Dates were unnecessary as they just conveyed a smidgen of the information that would eventually be on your wedding invitation or website.  Also, you would need to cough up an additional set of postage which adds even more to the bulging budget.  As a lover of all pretty paper things, I would always admire others' save the date cards while secretly mocking them in the snarky area of my brain.

That was then.  This is now:

About a month ago it was brought up in wedding guest list conversation that there was great worry over which relatives would be in town for our weekend due to my fiance's grandmother's 90th birthday falling on our wedding weekend.  Originally, I thought this was not a big deal, and it would be lovely for us to honor her at our wedding with an announcement, a dance with the groom, great photography, and maybe even her own little cake.  Apparently, that did not settle the matter.  

My side of the family tends to be laid back and go with the flow while my fiance's side tends to worry about every possible scenario conceivable by man.  Not only do they worry, they like to have a back up plan for each scenario.  I don't care to partake in worrying if I can at all avoid it.  I couldn't avoid it in this case...

Questions came up such as - What if they try to make your wedding into her birthday party?  What if they have her birthday party another weekend and then none of the out of town guests come to your wedding?  What if they throw a party on your wedding weekend and then more people come to your wedding?  My response:  It will be fine.  It will be fine.  It will be fine.  I mean really...it will seriously be okay.  The world will not spontaneously combust if we have more or less people come to the wedding.  Things have a funny way of working out...

I tried to avoid that topic, but after a couple of weeks, the conversations were increasing in frequency and panic-level, so what was the solution that I proposed to my fiance?  We should send a save the date card that points people towards our wedding website.  That way everyone has all the information needed, and we have done our job of communicating.  We both kind of agreed that after that, we didn't really want to partake in anymore conversations about "what ifs".  

So I whipped up a save the date card and laughed that I was doing exactly what I had sneered at five weeks earlier.  Anyhoo, along with quelching the worry-riddled conversations, here are some other bonuses of sending a save the date card:

- By sending them out, you are forced to gather all the addresses for your guest list.  

- If any cards come back, you know that you need to do some fact checking before you send out your invitations.

- You can play around with styles and start to think about what designs and colors you'd like on your invitations, programs, thank you cards, etc.  

- A large portion of people stop asking you questions that you feel that you've repeated about a million times.  (Unless, of course, they aren't invited!)

Below is our save the date card that we came up with.  I think it gives a pretty good hint at the theme of our wedding and also directs people towards the website where there is tons of information about all sorts of things related to our wedding.  

The front:

The back:

So all in all, I am pleased that we decided to go with the save the date cards. We ended up doing post cards so the postage was only 27 cents per piece rather than 44 cents for the full envelope type deal. Out of nearly 100 that we sent out, we've only had one come back to us with the address unknown. That gives me assurance that when we send our invitations this summer that they will safely arrive that their destinations. And best of all, a decision was magically made about the grandmother's birthday party. Funny how things work out...

Well I've waxed poetic about my thoughts on save the date cards. What do you guys think? Did you end up sending save the dates? What were your reasons to do so or not to do so? And if you're able to, post a picture of your save the dates in the message board! We love seeing all the different stationery ideas floating out there...

Do you ever find that planning a wedding has thrown your senses to the wind? Come on...I know I'm not alone here... Anyone? Anyone?

I ask you...what is wrong with a perfectly good envelope with a standard stamp on it?  Probably nothing, right?  Take this little number below.  It's sensible.  It has the proper information.  The stamp is legitimate and ready to be processed.  I could live with this envelope and it's Miss Manners-esque stamp...

image via all-free-download.com

But...

I am lately finding myself looking through stationery porn and finding images such as these below:

image by Bella Figura via Oh So Beautiful Paper

image by Primele via Oh So Beautiful Paper

image by Betsy Dunalp via Oh So Beautiful Paper

These pictures make me think of times when getting the mail was fun because you might have a special note from someone rather than "Dear Valued Customer" envelopes.  They make me think of really special occasions that warrant such beautiful ephemera such as...........a wedding!  I know that caution has been thrown to the wind as far as expenditures when you look at a wedding.  So why shouldn't your stamps be throw in with the mix?  

You can hunt around for vintage or unique stamps to make your envelopes look like these, or you can even have custom ones made!  Zazzle.com specializes in custom paper goods including postage stamps.  Take a look at a sample that I came up with that has my avatar picture on it:

Now, I don't know that I want a bunch of stamps with my picture on it, but you get the gist.  You can upload any picture or image for your stamp, and Zazzle will put it together for you.  Flowers, monograms, states, food...the sky's the limit!

If you care to indulge, your stamps will cost you about twice as much as they regularly would so be sure to add that in to your budget calculations.  But darn it!  Your envelopes will have style!!

So what do you think?  Is custom postage in your future?  

In more than a few conversations on the QCWeddings.com forum, I have shared information about one of my favorite websites, Etsy.com. After hearing feedback about how people have had overwhelming good luck on this site, I thought it only fair to share the love with all of our blog readers.

For those of you who have not visited Etsy.com yet, I am so excited for you! I remember the first time that I used the site and discovered all the fantastic opportunities on it! Essentially, Etsy.com is an enormous collection of vendors of all things handmade or vintage who have created stores in which they sell their wares. You can literally find just about anything you can imagine. Vintage yearbook pictures? Felt tooth pillows? All natural dog shampoo? You got it! I'm telling you, folks...think of the oddest item in the world and search for it on Etsy.com. There is someone who sells it or someone who is willing to make it custom for you.

Along with all the "weird" stuff on Etsy.com, you can find anything and everything you would ever need for your wedding. Dresses, candles, decorations, favors, banners, invitations, fans, cake stands, jewelry...I could go on forever. I like to think of it as mecca. Here are just a few items found on Etsy.com that are available for purchase:

Remember that this is a very SMALL sampling of some items I found while looking around. Here are some links in case you're interested in finding out more about the items shown above:

Row 1: Wedding Poster, Wedding Band, Tissue Flower Poms, Lace Garter

Row 2: Dress, Table Runner, Marriage Certificate, Necklace

Row 3: Calligraphy, Veil, Bachelorette Party Invites, Bouquet

Row 4: Bolero, Moss Initial, Wedding Sign, Earrings

Warning! Etsy is addictive! If you do not set a kitchen timer, you will stay on the site for hours and alienate your friends and family and fiance! Have fun!