As soon as I came across instructions for how to make pocket tissue holders on the craft website Skip To My Lou I knew I'd be making them for my wedding. I thought the tissue holders would make a fun and unique wedding favor.
At first I thought we'd set them on each guests dinner plate or somehow displayed in the reception area for everyone to take. But then I realized that it'd be kind of weird and random to have a tissue holder on your plate and thought it too boring to have them randomly set out in a basket. That's when I realized the best place for them would be at the ceremony site! What better place for tissue than where people will be crying.
The wedding programs and tissue holders were both made in green and brown (half and half of each color). On the day of the wedding I had my Day-of-wedding coordinator place a brown program and green holder and the opposite (green program, brown holder) alternating on each chair at the ceremony site. Loved the look! The details count!
Wedding programs
Since our ceremony was going to be outside I contemplated making these functional fan wedding programs. I got the idea and found the template for printing them on this website.
The instructions call for one sheet of scrapbook/stock paper but I wanted the fans to be less floppy and more functional so I thought I could easily do this by gluing together two pieces of thick scrapbook paper. One piece was patterned for the back of the fan and the other was plain for the front where the printing would go. It worked in theory but not in application.
First I printed the program on the plain paper, cut each blade out individually with a pair of scissors and then tried to glue the front and back pieces together. I quickly realized that since they were all cut out by hand, the printed piece and back piece did not line up exactly. Then I printed the program on the plain paper, glued that whole piece to the back and then cut the blades out as one. That worked better for the individual blades but still, since I was cutting them out by hand when I put all the blades together the variation between them although very slight was not perfect. I'm sure no one would have noticed that they weren't exactly the same size but it bothered me enough to not use them.
My failure came in trying to make the fan fully functional i.e., stiffer. The whole project is really easy and works really well if you're not obsessed, like I was, with making them thicker. Here's a kit I recently found that have the blades perforated! This would have been perfect for me, since the blades are already pre-cut they would have lined up perfectly when I doubled them up. Wish I would have come across it back then.
In the end I just went with traditional folded wedding programs. They were cute I guess but just pretty boring. Looking back I should have had Dave design a program like the wine labels he did. Now that would have been custom and much more unique!
Here are a few other fan wedding program ideas that I contemplated.
