DIY Ceremony Book

So I have had a busy, wedding related day today!

I got around to making my Ceremony and ring book!  I'll run through a quick step by step of how I did it:

First of all, I stuck the pages of the book together, keeping a few pages loose for me to stick our readings and vows onto for the ceremony. I did this by simply spreading some glue on the all edges and leaving it overnight, with a heavy weight on top. 

Next I drew a rectangle on the top page to mark out how big the hole would be. I used a craft knife to slice around each side and then just pulled the cut pages out, then repeated. It can get a bit tricky in the corners, so I'd reccommend taking your time - I rushed it a bit and the corners ended up a bit messy.

When I got to the bottom, I had to spend a while tidying it up from the other side (A good reason not to stick the pages to the back of the book at the beginning!). I also stuck a piece of paper to the back, just because the back cover of the book was blue, and I didn't want the bottom of the hole to be blue.

You can see here that the corners are still a bit messy, but I wasn't overly worried because I'd decided to cover them anyway. I decided to cut the hole underneath the words "Chapter two" just because I think it'll be quite sweet to have our wedding rings as chapter two, like our marriage is the second chapter of our life together (Awwwwww!)

I tried putting ribbon in (sticking it under pages) to tie our rings onto, but I decided that it was too wide. Thin ribbon would work well, but I didn't have any. Instead I used a beaded belt off an old skirt that was going to a charity shop, and cut the ends off it.

Then I used an old t-shirt, cut up, to cover the book completely. I didn't take any photos of me actually covering the book, but I did it the way that I was taught to cover my exercise books in school!

I like the fact that the book is stripey, like my dress will be! 

Next, I added a purple ribbon to the spine of the book, just to make it more colourful (and also because i'd cut the material a tiny bit too short so a bit of the blue spine was still showing!)

And finally, I stuck a bit of purple ribbon around the edge of the hole, to cover up my messy corners. I like the look of this, but if I had done it neatly to start with, I probably wouldn't have bothered with the ribbon.

I used double sided tape to stick the ribbon on, since I didn't want the glue to show through. It seems to work well enough!

And that's it! The only thing left to do is attach blank paper over the loose pages of the book, so that I can write our readings and vows on them, and we can use the book to read from during our ceremony - and have a lovely keepsake after the wedding!