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My son recently married, and I stumbled across a fun idea for wedding programs that the bride and I created for the wedding. These wedding program fans turned out beautifully and were well received by our guests! And since I love to share good, creative, crafting projects, here’s how you can create your own Wedding Program Fans.

When my oldest daughter began planning her wedding in 2019, I began collecting wedding ideas into a Pinterest board. In the midst of my suggested pins, an adorable design by Simply 2 Moms popped up. Wedding program fans! What a great idea for an outdoor summer wedding! But guess who was not getting married outdoors in the summer? My daughter. I saved the pin anyway.

So glad I did because when my son and now daughter-in-law chose a July date and wanted an outdoor ceremony, I had just the solution for those hot, sweltering, party guests!

I pulled up that saved pin and headed over to the post, How To Make Elegant Classic Wedding Fan Programs. There I subscribed to receive their very easy to use template that opened in Google Docs.

Although I thought the Great Vibes and Josefin fonts were very pretty, the bride and I had already been creating wedding stationery using Callem and Montserrat fonts. So I decided to make my own design in Canva utilizing the clipart from BeigeTimePrint that I had purchased on Etsy.

Simply 2 Moms gave great, step-by-step instructions for printing and assembling these programs yourself. But I chose to send my image to a printer instead. So let me walk you through my process for creating these DIY wedding program fans as well as link you back to theirs.

Supplies

• Template
• Corner Punch
• Double-sided Tape
• Wavy Paddle Handles
• White Duct Tape
• Paper Cutter

If you are printing these yourself, you will also need

• Cardstock
• Paper Scoring Board
• Paper Scoring Tools

Creating your design

My design was created on Canva using the clipart I purchased on Etsy. Since I don’t have the copyright to these images, I’ve created another one for you using Canva eucalyptus clipart. Sign up for the free template below. Or you can use the template that is free to Simply 2 Moms subscribers.

My Three Page Template

The Callem font that we used had a rather ugly capital letter L. I searched for ways around this, since I desperately need a beautiful L, and eventually I just had to cut and paste Callem’s capital letter C together with the capital letter L. Page One of my template uses the as-is Callem font for the bride and groom names in the heading without the L. Page Two is the image as it is shown in my pictures with the name Lisa and my own constructed letter L in a separate text block from bride and groom names (isa and Sam). Page Three only contains the text block that I created of the capital letter L.

If you are using the capital L block, you will need to move that image behind the others on the page. Since I used the free version of Canva, the letter L is surrounded by white that can cover other images if it isn’t moved to the background.

Working With My Local Printer

I love to use Alphagraphics for my printing rather than spend time and money on expensive printer ink. Besides that, I also prefer the quality of ink from a print shop because the color is true and unlikely to smudge. After creating my design in Canva, I downloaded the image as a Standard pdf and ticked the box to flatten the image. This was easy to upload to the printer’s website.

I recommend having your print shop print a test image before you order all your programs. When I did this, I found that they had used a heavy cardstock that was very difficult to fold. They worked with me to select a lighter, 100 weight cardstock, and then offered to score it for me which was a tremendous help and well worth the additional fee! If you print yourself, a 65 weight is usually easiest to run through a home printer.

Optional Edge Trimming

The design is meant to be printed on 8.5×11″ cardstock and folded to create a 5.5×8.5″ fan blade. We decided to trim these down, taking 1/2″ off the tops and bottoms so that our finished fan measured 5.5×7.5″.

Rounding the Corners

At home, bride and I folded the programs in half and punched the corners with a corner rounder. I soon discovered that my regular corner rounder couldn’t handle two sheets of the heavy cardstock and quickly broke. 

Now what? I reached out to a friend for suggestions and then headed to Michael’s to pick up this Crop-a-dile Corner Chomper for only $27.99. A quick solution to my overwhelming dilemma, this corner rounder really saved me in a pinch and did beautiful work! 

Attaching Handles and Finishing

Inside the folded program, we taped down the handles securely with white duct tape. Simply 2 Moms strongly suggested using tape instead of glue based on their mishap that required redoing all their programs the night before the wedding! Since the glue discolored their programs, I took their suggestion and went with tape. We attached double-sided tape at the indicated points inside the program and then pressed to close.

Simply 2 Moms attached ribbon to the handle which is sweet with their template design. Since we had already incorporated color in our eucalyptus template, we opted to keep the handle plain.

How many should I print?

Convention states that you should have one program for every guest. Convention here is wrong. For our first wedding, an indoor wedding in June, we ordered one program per couple and had unused programs. For this outdoor wedding in July we especially wanted to make sure no one was too hot. We ordered for three-fourths of our guests and again had plenty leftover.

Flowchart Summary

And there you have it! Helpful design tips from the School of Hard Knocks give you the tools you need to create wonderful and foolproof DIY wedding program fans! I can’t wait to hear about your results in the comments below!