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What is an Order of Service?
Order of service booklets play an important role in a wedding, funeral or christening ceremony. Not only do they ensure your guests are well-informed but they also work as a guide them to help them through each part of the service.
Many people like to keep an order of service as a token from the day, so it is definitely worth spending a little more time and money on printing your order of service.
Make Your Own Order of Service
Creating a DIY wedding order of service might feel overwhelming to begin with. As it is generally used to honour someone at a key stage of life, there’s often pressure to make sure it justifies the ceremony it’s representing. Before you start panicking over what photo to use and which typeface works best – don’t worry! It doesn’t have to be so complicated. Once you have an idea of what to include, it’s much easier to produce than you might think.
To help you along with creating your order of service, take a look at our handy tips on what exactly to include and how to make your design look its very best…
The Front Cover
An order of service layout is essentially quite simple in its set-up. For the front cover all you need to do is include the following information:
- Name or names of the people you are there to celebrate
- The date
- Venue and location
The font size for the front cover is usually between 14 and 22pt but this depends completely on how you would like your design to look: big and bold? Or small and minimal?
The Inside Contents
Choosing the amount of pages you need depends entirely on the event itself. Most orders of service have around 8 printed pages. The main things to include are:
- A paragraph about the person or couple
- A list of close family members
- A timeline of the day
- Any other locations such as the reception or wake venue
- Readings, poems or hymns
- A thank you note to your guests at the end
Layout
For a funeral or christening, it’s nice to have a picture of who you are celebrating on the front cover. It can also add a nice touch to include a collection of photos in the middle or at the end.
For a wedding day, we recommend matching your design to your wedding stationery.
When it comes to the layout of your text, the best practice is often to centralise your copy to make it clear and consistent. The key to a great order of service is simplicity. Choose an easy-to-read font so that the pages don’t look too cluttered and remember that you can use bold and italics to distinguish your headings from the rest of the text.
The back cover is often forgotten about when designing but it’s always nice to make use of it by adding a line from a poem or an inspirational quote that will touchingly sum up the event.
So next time you are creating a funeral, christening or wedding order of service, apply some of our top tips and we’re sure you’ll be happy with the outcome.
