No matter what type of wedding ceremony you are planning, an order of service can be an important element of your big day. Without one, your guests won’t be able to follow along with the ceremony, and will be unsure when to join in with songs and celebration.
Alongside your invitations, your order of service makes a great keepsake for you and your guests. It’s important to make them look great, and that’s where we come in.
What is a Wedding Order of Service?
An order of service is a printed booklet or card that provides your guests with a run-through of your wedding ceremony. It traditionally contains all of the wording for your readings and lyrics for your hymns. All of the information is provided within the ‘order of service’, allowing your guests to follow along with the proceedings.
For traditional, religious ceremonies we recommend an order of service ‘booklet’ with a card cover and paper inserts stapled inside. For less traditional, civil and humanist ceremonies you may not need to so much information and wording. We tailor each order of service according to the wedding and can also match them to other wedding stationery items.
Less traditionally, we can also create large-format signs of your order of service that can be placed around your venue but these aren’t suitable for church and religious ceremonies due to hymns. We can also provide matching welcome boards and table plans.
Do you need an Order of Service?
Many people think that you only need an order of service for church weddings, but this isn’t necessarily the case. Civil and humanist ceremonies can still benefit from having one. An order of service can also be created to incude useful guest information such as reception venue details, bridal party names and other timings.
If you are having a religious wedding your order of service will help guests with hymn lyrics and wording from readings. It’s also helpful for your guests who aren’t familiar with the format to understand what’s happening. For instance, Catholic weddings have a lot of rites and prayers that happen in a specific sequence – your order of service will list the order of events for anyone who is unfamiliar with the ceremony which makes it easier for your guests to get involved.
Saying all of that, ultimately, the final decision as to whether you get orders of service printed is down to you. if you’d like to discuss your ideas, or if you have any quuestions please feel free to get in touch.
What to Include on an Order of Service
We can help you with how much detail you want to include within your Order of Service. Some of the most important items you’ll need to consider including are:
Entrance of the Bride
Welcome
Hymns
Readings
Vows
Exchanging of Rings
Signing of the Register
Exit of the Bride and Groom
If we have space we can often include other details such as the names of the people in your bridal party, music choices and more.
How to Design your Order of Service
Now for the fun part and this is where we come in. All of your day stationery, including your order of service, can easily be designed to match your wedding theme and colour scheme. If you’ve ordered your wedding invitations from us then this process is easy and we can use the same fonts, cardstock and embellishments to tie your theme together.
If your order of service has a lot of words, a more simple design could give you more space or we can look at adding more pages. Everything is made to order so there’s no limitations.
Wording for an Order of Service
The wording of your order of service is the most important part. The text you use needs to be informative, and clear enough to read. Remember that if you’re expecting a few elderly guests they may struggle with reading tiny text, so at least keep the headings of each section, hymn and reading nice and clear. It’s also worth considering that often the lighting conditions in churches can be poor which is another reason for keeping your font size in mind.
Calligraphy and script style fonts look great but are often ticky to read. We recommend calligraphy for your names and headings with a more simply font style, with good kerning (space between words) for the rest.
The Best Order of Service Designs
All of our day stationery looks and feels amazing and there’s plenty of designs to choose from too. Check out our galleries for inspiration. We use the best quality materials so that your order of service booklets make a lovely keepsake for your guests.
Please get in touch with any questions about us or our creations. Or you can check out our blog for more wedding stationery guides and advice. We look forward to hearing from you.
