Ceremony Programs - Tutorial

Back before I left for the wedding, which seems like forever ago, I posted about our ceremony programs that we "settled" for. You remember, these little things:

Well you could have knocked me over with a feather when I got requests for a tutorial on these. I mean after I saw them in action at the wedding I loved them but back when I wrote that post I was in the "yea they look good enough" mindset. So it kind of floored me that other people liked them enough to want to make their own.

As requested here is the step-by-step of how I did it. And by the way, they were SOOOOO easy and cheap to make.

First, lets talk fonts. The cursive handwriting at the top is a free font called Dear Joe Four, I used Prestige Elite for the main text area and the headings on the side of the pages (and in the middle of the cover) are done in Eras Light ITC. Other than that it was just photos I added along with three lines of brown dots on each side.

In order to print these front to back and have them line up I used a very simple technique in PowerPoint. I drew lines. No really I used the line tool and drew guidelines exactly the same distance from what would be the outside edges of the paper:

Above is the front and back side of page 2. Next I added a outline box, brown dotted lines and headings then copied them into each of the pages I wanted so that they were all lined up exactly the same. All that was left then was to add the content.

After they were printed and cut out, it was time to assemble them with metallic eyelets and a crop-a-dile tool. I measured out the exact spacing I wanted for the eyelets on a extra cover I printed, marked a line at 1/2 inch from the edge, then punched holes in the locations spaced equally apart along that line to create a template.

Then came the easy part. I lined up the template on each cover and traced inside the holes I punched. Next I stack all the pages for a single program together and used the crop a dile to punch holes where I had marked on the covers using the template. Then it was just a matter of putting the eyelets into the holes and using the crop-a-dile to smash the eyelet down to secure it. (Tartlet totally has the how to use a crop-a-dile tutorial going on here in case you need some help.)

Besides paper and printing, the only things I bought were the eyelets which were $2.99 for the 100 piece package and a crop-a-dile on sale for $18 (using the 40% off coupon in our local craft store's flyer). It was completely affordable and everyone loved them.