A Guide to Making a Wedding Program

My husband and I recently celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary. We got married way back when by a Justice of the Peace and did not have a wedding. We decided to get married in our religion, Judaism. Many of you may be planning a wedding and want various terms explained. This is most important when you have lingo, customs, ethnicities, or cultural traditions that others won't understand.

Programs

I did some research on the Internet but ultimately made our program our own. Your program can be as simple as a typed piece of paper handed out to your guests or as formal as a program on fancy paper. We compromised and bought tri-fold programs at Michael's but you can find them at most party places. They come with a template which makes placing what you want to say fairly easy.

One difference with this tri-fold versus regular paper is that there is a limit to how much you can say. In addition unless you have a sophisticated copy machine, you will have to do what we did - bring the paper and the original to Staples. For $11.00 I had 65 programs made and for another $7.00 they were hand folded for me. You can certainly save the $7.00. At that point every bit of help we got was worth the money.

The tri-fold opens just how you see it in the pictures. I have crossed out peoples' names to protect their privacy. You can place the wording of your program in any sequence you choose. On our first page, which is what people saw right away, I used the Hebrew letters for wedding. By the way, Google translator helped me enormously. Take advantage of that free tool if you want any words in the language of your choice translated. On that page I had the name of the Synagogue, the Rabbi's name, our names, the date in Hebrew and in English and a list of people we wanted to thank. We had a portable chuppah (Which is an example of what is explained in the text.) so our kids held it. We named them under Chuppah Holders. We also had Benedictions and Ushers (Who gave out the programs and kippah -also explained) whose names were listed. We had a ketubah (explained) which was witnessed by two friends. Their names were in the text.

The topics we chose

We (I) cut and pasted many times until I got what I thought was the essential information I wanted to get across. There was a lot of information (such as why the bride stands on the right of the groom) that I didn't have room for.

Songs: We explained that the songs our guests were listening to were chosen by us. We used our first names or "the couple" rather than "we" in our program.

The Ketubah: I explained this marriage contract and noted who would be witnessing our signing of it.

Why Now: I thought this was important because many people knew we were already married and some didn't understand why we would want to get married in our faith.

The Kippah: I explained that this is a head covering worn as a sign of respect.

The Chuppah: This is what our adult children held. It is a symbol for the home we share and a symbol that we invite our family and friends into our home. My dad's and grandfather's tallit (prayer shawls) were on top of the roof of the chuppah.

The Wine: We drink from a glass of wine during the ceremony. I had thought of buying a wine from the year we first met but didn't. I think for many this is a great idea.

The Wedding Vows: We wrote them and told us guests that.

The Marriage Benedictions: These have been part of a Jewish wedding for thousands of years. We explained that we chose friends to recite them.

The Breaking of the Glass: We indicated a couple of reasons this is done in religious terms. We also said that it signals an end of the ceremony with shouts of Mazel Tov (congratulations) and "let the party begin."

The Motzi: This is often done at the Synagogue but we had it done at our reception venue. It is a traditional prayer of thanks before the meal.

As a 57- year old bride who got married for the 3rd time (I am divorced.), I will be writing more on this event. Please feel free to leave me any questions or themes that you may have about which you would like me to write.