By the time I came to orders of service, I was well and truly on the handmade wedding train, with no thoughts of getting off.

Depending on how many guests you have coming to your ceremony, this one could be pretty heavy-lifting to tackle alone – even though it’s not hard, tying 100 bits of ribbon, sticking 400 bits of doily etc. is not a task you can polish off in a couple of hours single-handed.

Call in the bridesmaids! Luckily, they were also up for some wedding crafting, and came round for an afternoon of tea, prosecco, snacks and order of services. It’s worth mentioning at this point that my original design proposal (something like sticking the doily in the middle of the piece of card) was met with complete mockery from my lovely friends, who happen to be much more genuinely artistic than me. So I can’t actually take very much credit for this design at all!

What we used:

1) A4 Kraft Brown Premium Card from Hobbycraft (or something similar)

2) Mini paper doilies (also Hobbycraft)

3) Mixed scrapbooking card with rustic patterns (Hobbycraft)

4) Cream card

5) Sharpie pen or similar

6) Selection of ribbon and twine to match your colour scheme

7) Holepunch, scissors and Pritt Stick

8) Print-outs of your actual order of service to go inside

What we did:

Note – there are lots of separate tasks that need repeating here, so running it like an assembly line is very effective!

1) Folded the Kraft Brown card in half to make an A5 card

2) Cut the doilies into quarters, and stick them in each corner on the front of the card

3) Cut the cream card into small rectangles, and get your friend with the nicest handwriting (or you, if you back yourself) to do the ‘Order of Service’ wording onto this. Also cut the scrapbooking card into even smaller rectangles, and get the same person to do your intial (K&R in our case) to stick on the back

4) Once the neat handwriter has done their thing, back the cream rectangles onto the patterned scrap-booking card, and stick this onto the front of the main card, pretty much in the centre

5) Stick the initials card onto the back of the main card

6) Put your printed orders of service inside the sleeve, and do a half hole-punch on the side (i.e. you want the hole to be a full circle when you open the booklet up)

7) Tie through the ribbons, mixing up different strands of colour

Great for some bridesmaid bonding, but not one to rush. Special credit also goes to my Mum on this, who tag-teamed in to support on the ribbon tying, when I left this part until about two days before the wedding.

My Mum had an old hamper in the garage that a friend had given her, and we decided to spend some mother-daughter bonding time re-purposing it as a rustic card box.

What you need:

There are no hard and fast rules about what you decorate with – we chose some fake ivy (from Ginger Ray), a little wicker heart (Hobbycraft), some lace ribbon for the sides (Hobbycraft), and some blue cord and paper flowers for card-making (also from Hobbycraft!)

I also made some bunting using cream and brown card, a Sharpie pen for the letters (carefully copied after googling calligraphy styles), and string and mini pegs to hold everything together.

Along with the decorations, Mum surfaced a couple of bits and pieces that proved pretty useful in the assembly process:

1) PVC-coated garden wire – really useful for winding into the wicker basket to hold things like the ivy in place

2) Super-glue – used to stick down the flowers, cord and lace, and also helpful for sticking down the pegs for the bunting – otherwise the letters kept dropping off!

3) Disposable gloves – for when you inevitably stick your fingers together with the super-glue

Aside from this, all you really need to do is stick the various bits on as you want them. It turned out that Mum’s attention to detail when it came to things like straightness was much more fine-tuned than mine, so maybe she’s the one that should be sharing the tips…that’s teamwork for you anyway!

Links:

Fake ivy: https://www.johnlewis.com/ginger-ray-decorative-vines-pack-of-5/p3200589

Paper flowers: https://www.hobbycraft.co.uk/tuscan-grey-paper-flowers-20-pack/634042-1003