Order of Ceremony Fans- with a twist!

We never wanted Programs or Order of Services for our wedding - we didn't really see the need since we are having a civil ceremony so there are no hymns or blessings that need to be printed for the guests.

However, I had been toying with the idea of giving fans out as favours, because it will (hopefully) be hot and I don't want everyone to melt during the ceremony! I'd seen program fans before, but dismissed them as nice but unnecessary as we didn't see the point in listing all of the wedding party by name, since we had already put that information on our wedding website.

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 I like these fans, but I think it is more of an American tradition to have a "program" where all the wedding party is listed, with their names and roles. In the UK, I think it's only common to have an "order of service" for a religious ceremony, because you would need to print any hymn or prayer words, and explain the meaning of certain things to guests that might not be of the same religion.

Anyway - we didn't need them, but when I saw these fans on Wedding Bee, I fell in love!

From WeddingBee

Now, I know that the picture above looks like every other program fan, but if you click on the link, you will see that these fans are amazing, because they have puzzles on the back!

I immediately wanted them! I thought it was a great idea to keep guests busy while they waited for the ceremony to start, and it was just really fun too. The tutorial on Wedding Bee is really simple and clear, so the fans should be fairly easy to make.

I set about designing our fans. We decided that they would be "Order of Ceremony" fans rather than programs, since we just wanted to include a list of the different ceremony parts (e.g. processional, reading, vows, exchange of rings etc) with the names of any songs or readings.

It took me a while to decide which puzzles to have on the fans - I loved the 'Fill in the blanks' quiz from the tutorial, so I shamelessly stole that, plus I decided on a word search, a crossword and anagrams. Four different puzzles seemed like a reasonable number.

Fill in the blanks Fan

 I wanted to include the same pattern that we will use on the invitations, to tie everything together. Plus I just really like the pattern! I tried to keep it relatively simple, with just the basic information on it. 

Word search Fan

I made the word search for this fan using this site and it was pretty simple. You literally just type in a list of words that you want in the puzzle, set the fonts and size etc, and then hit "make puzzle". I just right clicked and saved the created word search as a picture, then pasted it on to my fan template, adding a coloured border to it. Easy.

Anagram Fan

I have to admit, I love anagrams! I used this site to find the anagrams - you just type in the word and it will give you hundreds of different anagrams. I preferred to choose the ones that sounded funniest - for example Bridesmaid = mad birdies. I wont tell you the others - you have to work them out for yourself!

Crossword Fan

I knew that I definitely wanted to include a crossword, but this was by far the most difficult and time consuming. I used this site to make the crossword and it was really easy - the hard part was coming up with the clues! I was trying to keep the clues fairly simple, because there will be children doing the puzzles too - and these are supposed to be fun, not an IQ test! Anyway, when I eventually managed to think of enough clues, I saved the puzzle as a picture and pasted on to my template. It also took me a while to arrange it so that the clues fit on the page, but I got there in the end.

So those are our Order of Ceremony Fans!
As per the tutorial, we will just print them onto card, fold in half and glue a stick in between. The tutorial shows how to attach a pencil to the handle with a ribbon, but I think we will probably just have a jar of pencils next to the fans for people to take. The reason for this is that I want the fans to actually be used for cooling people down, and a big bit of ribbon with a pencil on the end might get in the way slightly. I've not decided for sure yet, but we'll probably leave the pencils separate.

I'm quite excited about these fans - hopefully our guests will find them fun and useful! If it rains, they could always use them as tiny umbrellas, I suppose!

I created these fans in Powerpoint, just by drawing a line down the middle of a (landscape) slide and arranging the various text boxes and pictures. When I print, I will print 1 slide to a full page, so that the fans will be A5 when folded.

I have no idea how to make a ppt document available to download here, but if anyone wants a copy of the powerpoint document with the fan designs then I would gladly email it.