How To Create Your Own Beautiful Orders of Service

Fancy creating your own Orders of Service? Hopefully this tutorial will help!

You Will Need:

Pre-printed A5 Orders of Service
15mm Double sided satin ribbon
Sharp clean scissors
Invisible thread
Fine needle
Mini diamante heart embellishments
Ruler
15 mm Double sided sticky tape
Scissors for tape
Glue gun and glue sticks

1.  Cut a 30cm length of ribbon.

2.   Thread needle with a reasonable length of invisible thread and knot at one end. Weave the needle through the ribbon at the centre, draw it through & then wrap the thread around to pinch the middle together, push the needle through the centre to secure.

3.   Cross the right hand side of the ribbon over the front of the left hand side and draw the needle through the crossover about a third of the way down, drawing the centre of the ribbon to the back of the crossover and then wrap the thread around the middle several times to form a bow. You will need to carefully adjust the loops and tails as you do this to ensure that they are even before pushing the needle through                                                 from front to back of the middle of the bow to secure the knot.

      4.  Sew the end of the roll of ribbon onto the back of the bow, but don’t cut                to length yet.

5. Flip the ribbon down so that it covers the end you’ve just sewn (carefully trim any fraying) then wrap around up over the front of the bow and back down the back so that you have a neat centre to the bow.

6.   Place your mini heart embellishment on the front of the centre of the bow, taking care to adjust both the bow and heart neatly before stitching it in place. Finish off the thread behind the bow centre and cut short.

7.   Now measure a 46cm length of ribbon from the centre of the bow and cut.
 

8.   Place double sided sticky tape down the side of the Orders of Service, making sure to use different scissors to your sharp clean ribbon scissors.

9.   With the protective cover still on the tape, wrap your ribbon around the card and trim the end to around halfway down the centre of the bow.

 10.    Peel enough of the protective cover off the tape and fix the end of your ribbon in place. Then you can pull the bow out of the way to peel the remainder of the tape away before adjusting the ribbon and carefully fixing to the tape.

 11.   The bow will at this stage still need to be fixed in place, so with your glue gun apply a small amount of hot glue behind the centre of the bow and press into place – be careful not to use too much glue as you don’t want it to squidge out of the sides!

12.   Using your sharp clean scissors trim the tails of your bow into even    points.

Fiddly, but worth it! If you would like us to provide the materials please contact us via our website, email or you can phone us on 07899 664070. We can also print your Orders of Service for you on high quality heavy card and paper - our printer takes up to 300gsm card which will give your stationery a beautiful and luxurious feel. 

Wedding Stationery Sussex

Yes, size DOES matter!

I'm talking about font size here everyone, amongst other things! I recently had a call from a b2b who was looking for a stationer to rescue her after being badly let down by another company. She had received the invitations and was pleased with them apart from the fact that the envelopes were not quite big enough to allow them to be sealed normally as there was a large bow across the front of the invitations, and the flaps had to be taped down leaving a very inelegant bulky item to be posted. This leaves me posing the question of why a stationer would go to the trouble of hand making each invitation only to have it forced into an envelope which is clearly not man enough for the job - I want my bespoke and handmade work to arrive with the invitee looking as good as when it left my office not crushed and crumpled, and if I were buying a product that had been carefully handmade and this was reflected in the price I would expect it to arrive looking good!

But then things got worse in that she kept having to chase for other items she had paid in full for such as the Order of Service booklets and the Post Box. When they did finally arrive the poor bride found that she could barely read the text as it was in such a small font. Now, she is young and in good health and had problems reading the text, so imagine how some of the guests whose eyesight was not so good may have struggled with using the service sheets. At most weddings there are generally older family members and those with less than perfect eyesight, and us ladies especially after a while primping and getting ready for the day don't want to be struggling with putting glasses on and off during the service and messing up our hair/hat/fascinator! 

I've seen and printed out the pdf version of the Order of Service that she was emailed to proof and it prints fine on A4 but when the A5 booklets came through the font size was around half the size of that in the pdf - I suspect that this was done purely to allow all the text to fit on three pages instead of working on the text to make it flow properly over four pages. I personally feel that this was a very sloppy and lazy solution to a problem, and that it is the job of the stationer to ensure that the text looks good, is legible, and flows correctly. Furthermore it is the job of the stationer to advice the client - if the client chooses to go ahead without taking advice then so be it, but if I feel that the job is not being done properly then I will say so, after all it's my reputation on the line!

Order of Service sheets are hard work, there is no getting away from it, that's why most people prefer to pay someone with experience of them to do the job, but if a company can't be bothered to do it properly then they shouldn't be offering the service in the first place. I always make sure that I tell clients how the pdf files are saved (e.g. A4 landscape) so that they can print them out and see properly how the text looks - a proof is not just for checking spellings and grammar! Where possible I also send or deliver a hard copy of the document fully made up.

Does this sound like a rant? Yes? Good, because you're more likely to remember it! The good news for this lovely bride is that we have managed to rescue the situation and the fresh Order of Service booklets are now ready, the Post Box has been rescued and other on the day stationery are well under way.