To Program, or Not to Program

Alternative Title: I NEED HELP.

Hey guys!

I’ve been agonising over this for a while, and I know it’s silly, but guys –

Do I make wedding programs for guests?

Seriously, guys!

I know I want people to know who our bridal party is, and I’d like to give some information to our guests, especially as there will be some things that aren’t ‘standard’ at both ceremonies (heck, one ceremony is beyond standard for half of the wedding guests), but… I don’t want to waste the money and time designing and printing programs with the knowledge that it’s going to be thrown away.

I guess the same can be said about our invitations.

I think the thing that bothers me the most about programs is the fact that you have to be succinct about the information you give, but we’ll have a lot happening, and I don’t know if it’s entirely possible.

Granted, I’ve seen some gorgeous wedding programs, and they make me think I should do programs, but I don’t know, hive.

The two I’ve been tossing up are the double sided rack card wedding programs:

From etsy shop, How Lovely Paper.

And the wedding program in the form of a sign:

From etsy shop, beth and borrow.

I love the sign idea because –

• it won’t get thrown away
• we can have it at the front so that guests can have a gander if they really need the information, and
• it’ll look pretty.

Mr Big is a goer for this idea and suggested it especially for the Chinese Tea Ceremony. Only problem is, DIY’ing it may be a breathtaking failure, simply because my skills on a chalkboard aren’t fantastic, as evidenced earlier. I could always do it digitally, but I’d need to print it out through a printing website or a brick-and-mortar printing place.

And then somehow frame it.

Buying a pre-made sign may be even harder considering the difficulty in procuring those kinds of goods in Australia.

As for the rack cards, I know I can digitally design something good enough, but then we have to pay for the cost per rack card from a site like Vistaprint. And then there’s the delivery of said rack cards. Vistaprint does awesome deals, but still… that’s some money we’re using which can go towards other things.

So, I’m letting you weigh in.

Do I make wedding programs for my guests? If I do, should I choose the program-per-guest route, or the sign-at-the-front route?