Wedding Tips: Year-Round Ideas for Wedding Programs

By Antoinette Boulay

Wedding programs are an integral part of your wedding ceremony. Through wedding programs, your guests are able to feel more involved with your wedding. In addition, the knowledge of what is to come often helps guests have a better time at your reception and provides you with a way for keeping your guests informed about the meaning behind certain aspects of you ceremony. Programs are also excellent keepsakes for your guests.

What to Include in Your Wedding Program

Wedding programs are a fairly flexible addition to your wedding ceremony and reception. A basic program should include information regarding rituals, customs, or traditions being included in your wedding ceremony and in your reception. With the program, you can explain any aspect that may be unfamiliar to your guests. Of course, it should also include the times for certain events, particularly if your program will cover your reception events as well.

Wedding programs can also include many extras to help make them more personal. For example, you might include a brief biography of the members of your bridal party. Favorite poems, quotes, and photographs are also an excellent addition to your program. You might even honor a deceased relative or friend by including meaningful photos, quotes, or poems on the back of your program.

Program Designs

When it comes to wedding programs, anything that can be written on can be used. You might print your program on paper fans or in booklets. You can even be creative and place your program on scrolls of parchment or create a Playbill containing the names of the “actors” in your ceremony in order to help set the tone for your ceremony.

Winter Ideas for Wedding Programs

The time of year during which you get married can play a large part in determining the design and layout of your wedding programs. If you will be having a wedding program, you might create a program booklet that is bound in white faux fur. Or, use the traditional single-sheet program and attach a silver-studded snowflake to the top. Another idea is to create an ice-blue program and cover the top sheet with an piece of velum that is opaque and reads “Welcome to our Warm Winter Wedding.”

Spring Ideas for Wedding Programs

Spring is a fun and colorful time filled with blooming flowers. Therefore, spring wedding programs should reflect that same spirit. You might consider creating a two-fold program with a cover the same color as your wedding colors. Then engrave or emboss a bouquet of white blooms on the cover. Or, create a booklet and wrap it in chiffon ribbon and place a snap on it to keep it secure. If you want to keep it simple yet romantic, create a vertical program and place it on each of your guests’ chairs. Place a stone engraved with Love, Forever, or Joy on top of the program to keep it in place.

Summer Ideas for Wedding Programs

Summer brings with it thoughts of sunshine and splashing at the beach. To play upon this natural theme, you might create wedding programs that are bound with a string of seashells. Or, make fan-shaped programs that include all the colors of a sunset when they are opened. If you are going to lay your programs on your guests’ chairs, hold them down with a package of sparklers. This can be gorgeous if you are having an outdoor wedding and all of your guests light the sprinklers at the end of the ceremony.

Fall Ideas for Wedding Programs

In the fall, your wedding programs could include a leaf design. Or, create a small booklet with a mocha or cocoa colored cover and bind it with twine. Finish the look off with an attached acorn covered in gold glitter. Agold or yellow program with a velum overlay topped with a velvet chocolate-brown ribbon is another beautiful option.

Visit Aragia.com for tips on best man speeches and bridesmaid gift giving. Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Antoinette_Boulay

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Types Of Parties For Your Wedding

by Rebecca Sherman

A wedding means celebration, as friends and family honor the bride and groom with an array of pre- and post-wedding parties. The bride finds herself the center of attention at showers, luncheons and dinners where her biggest responsibility is to enjoy herself!

The Engagement Party

Parents traditionally host the first engagement party, held either on or soon after the day the announcement appears in the newspapers. Occasionally, the parents of the bride and groom will host the same party, but more often separate parties are held. Engagement parties often serve an important function. It is a convenient way for parents to introduce their child's fiancé to family and friends. And of course some parents find this party an enjoyable way to get to know their child's fiancé better as well.

Showers

Traditionally, showers are given for the bride, but today it is not unusual to find the groom at these lively functions as they are now generally more involved in the wedding planning than in the past.

Showers are given by any friend or relative who wants to do something special for the couple. Customarily, members of the immediate family of the bride and groom do not host a shower, however that is changing in recent years and is now more acceptable. Every bride is entitled to at least one shower--the laws of etiquette are there to help, not hinder, the effort. Often, it is the honor attendant with the help of the maids, who volunteers to host a shower. Since the shower is always given by someone other than the bride, this is one instance when registry information can be included with the invitation.

The Bachelor and Bachelorette Party

Today both bachelor and bachelorette parties are equally popular. These types of parties are generally very casual and emphasize having fun, unwinding and celebrating the wedding. The party may or may not include a dinner and takes place in a home, a club or the private dining room of a restaurant. These celebrations often incorporate a theme and can include attending a sporting event, going to a comedy club or on a shopping excursion. Some enjoy activities such as laser tag, paintball, gambling, golfing, bowling or even camping.

Getting there can be half the fun when you hire a limousine, bus or other transportation service to take partygoers from one destination to another. This also alleviates the responsibility of designated drivers, allowing everyone the opportunity to celebrate.

If alcoholic beverages are served, the party should be a minimum of several days before the wedding, if not a few weeks prior. No one will want to look less than his/her best for the day of the wedding.

The Rehearsal Dinner

The rehearsal dinner, held immediately after the rehearsal, can be as simple or elaborate as the host wishes. However, it should never upstage the wedding itself. It is best to go to a restaurant or club. This eliminates anyone in the immediate family having to deal with entertaining and clean-up the night before the wedding.

Traditionally, the groom's parents are responsible for the cost of the rehearsal dinner. If they are from out of town, they may ask the mother of the bride to help with reservations. But it is perfectly acceptable to have a godparent, friend or member of the bride's family do the honor of hosting this function.

The guest list will include the attendants, the bride and groom's immediate family, the ceremony official (and spouse, if any), plus any out-of-town guests, family or friends the couple or the host wishes to invite. If it has not already been done, the attendants' gifts may be distributed at this occasion. All will fare better if they make it an early evening. The best party--the wedding --is yet to happen!

Gift Opening Party

Nowadays many couples plan gift opening parties. This small gathering usually only includes the bride and groom's families and members of the bridal party. More often than not, gifts are opened the day after the wedding or soon after the newlyweds return from their honeymoon.

When held the day after the wedding, the gift-opening party is often planned around a meal. Snacks and refreshments left over from the reception may also be served.

But the purpose of the party, of course, is to open the wedding gifts. A few moments of planning will save headaches later, therefore a careful record of who sent what is a necessity. A guest book with a gift record section, available from stationers, book stores and bridal shops, is recommended.

About the Author

Rebecca Sherman is an editor at ModernWeddingPlanner.com

Planning a Wedding? Our Free Online Wedding Planner has sections to track guest information, RSVP's, budgets, shower and wedding gifts and More! Plus export your data to Excel.

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