Ideas for the Wedding Newspaper

Instead of a wedding performance, would you like to give the bride and groom a lasting memento of their time together? At the same time, do you want to be part of the festivities and provide entertainment for the guests? Then a wedding newspaper is just the thing!

The idea of creating a wedding newspaper isn’t new, but it never fails to make an impression: Guests get a glimpse into the couple’s past, and the bride and groom get to see all the well-wishes from their loved ones.

Customize Your Wedding Newspaper

Even though the preparation involved is no small task, we’d recommend relying on templates only to a limited extent. That’s because there are now many tools that let you create a personalized wedding newspaper quickly and easily. If you’re somewhat familiar with InDesign or Canva, you can make do with a free version of the tool during the short preparation period. Of course, your wedding newspaper will look truly professional if you let real experts handle the work. The stationery specialists listed on Austria Wedding will create wedding newspapers that match the rest of your wedding’s design. They also know the best places to go for affordable yet high-quality printing.

5 Steps to Creating a Wedding Newspaper & Timeline

Some groups of friends and witnesses consider designing a wedding newspaper to be very time-consuming. We can put your minds at ease: with our 5-step guide to creating a wedding newspaper, you’ll have a clear idea of the timeline for gathering content and coordinating as a group. So if you stick to our schedule, you’ll end up with a high-quality wedding newspaper packed with great content:

1. Wedding Newspaper: Gathering Ideas and Pictures

You can start gathering ideas as soon as you receive the save-the-date cards or invitations from the bride and groom—usually about 8–10 months before the wedding. Don’t worry if you’re running a little behind; you’ll still be able to put together a beautiful wedding magazine—you may just have to scale back a bit on some topics.

2. Wedding Newspaper: Determining the Content

A collection of ideas is not yet a fixed pool of editorial topics. So now—about six months to four months before the wedding date—you need to finalize the topics and identify the people involved. Make a list of the people who are supposed to contribute to the newspaper. Decide right away who will communicate with them, and don’t forget to include their contact information in the list. You’ll probably need it again later.

3. Wedding Magazine: Asking for Help

Four to three months before the big day, send out the information about the wedding newspaper or an email/WhatsApp message asking those involved for their help. Don't forget to set a firm deadline (at least 2 months before the wedding date).

4. Wedding Newspaper: Laying Out the Content

Assign someone to compile the text and photos—in the last few weeks before the wedding—into the predefined layout. This could be someone from your group of friends, but of course , a professionally hired designer will handle the content best and most efficiently . A designer is also well-versed in print runs and preparing print files for the printer. In any case, you or the designer should contact the print shop at least seven to eight weeks before the wedding. Alternatively, you can, of course, print the wedding newspaper yourselves—but in that case, the newspaper shouldn’t be more than 2–3 pages long, otherwise your printer will overheat with the large number of copies you’ll likely need.

5. Send the wedding newsletter to print

Check the print files multiple times and work closely with the printer or your designer to eliminate as many typos and oversights as possible before printing. Of course, a wedding newspaper isn’t a high-gloss publication and doesn’t have to be 100 percent perfect, but it’s still nice to keep spelling errors and oversights to a minimum. The print files are usually submitted about 4 weeks before the wedding, which gives the printer two weeks for printing and delivery, and allows you to store the copies at home at your leisure, review them, and, if necessary, start packaging or distributing them.

Essentials for Every Wedding Newsletter

Every wedding newspaper has a similar structure. Of course, it’s nice to add your own personal touch to the layout and content. Still, there are a few standard elements that make a wedding newspaper instantly recognizable:

• Cover with an image (and a little text)
• Editorial or Foreword by the Team of Authors
• Table of Contents and Page Numbers
• Legal Notice
• A reference to typos and spelling errors. For example, in the form of the saying: “Anyone who finds mistakes in the texts is welcome to keep them.”
• Introduction of the Bride and Groom
• Closing Remarks

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The foreword and the title page of a wedding newspaper

The cover page and the foreword—these two elements of the wedding newspaper already make up a large part of what makes for a good newspaper. After all, the cover page is the first thing people see, and the foreword—if it’s well-written—will draw your readers right into the wedding newspaper. Based on our experience, we’d like to share the following tips with you:

• When it comes to the cover, less is more. A beautiful, high-resolution photo of the couple and a few pops of color in the shades they’ve chosen for their color scheme—and just like that, you’ve got a beautiful cover for your wedding newspaper! If you’d like, you can also add a short quote or a wedding saying.
• Start with a personal foreword. In it, explain why you value your friendship with the couple and what you hope to achieve with the wedding newspaper. Don’t make the foreword too long, though—after all, you want the guests to read the rest of the newspaper carefully as well.

Ideas for the Wedding Newspaper

A wedding magazine thrives on its content. The better, more insightful, funnier, and more entertaining the articles are—and the better the content is curated—the longer the wedding guests will spend reading the magazine, and the more copies you’ll be able to sell. We’ve gathered many ideas that will help you create great content for your magazine:

• Profiles of the bride and groom and their children (Not all guests know both of them and would love to learn more about them)
• Highlights the bride and groom's horoscopes.
• Let the bride's parents have their say and ask them to share some brief anecdotes from her childhood.
• Interview with the couple. The rule here is: Good questions lead to interesting answers! So don’t ask, “How did you two meet?”—instead, ask something more specific, like, “Do you remember what went through your mind the first time you saw each other at the pizzeria?”
• Ask a fortune-teller. She'll surely predict a bright future for the two of them.
• Wedding Jokes!
• A photographic journey through the couple's many wonderful years together (vacations, trips, everyday life).
• Wedding memes.
• Gather congratulations and messages from the couple's siblings.
• A crossword puzzle is a great way to pass the time—in the newspaper and maybe even while waiting for the wedding dessert.
• Wedding sayings are always a hit! From funny to romantic to downright cheesy, feel free to let your creativity run wild here.
• You can display the bride and groom's baby photos, childhood photos, and photos from their teenage years side by side.
• 10 Ideas for Unique Date Nights!
• Showcase what the bride and groom enjoy doing and what brings them together: their favorite recipes, podcast recommendations, or their suggestions for ski tours and hiking trails.
• A collage of the couple's childhood photos with the years listed.
• Fun and tongue-in-cheek advice from friends about marriage.
• The marriage proposal as a comic/illustration or as a written narrative.
• Guest Introduction: Seating Chart & Brief Profile.
• Digging through the archives: Wedding photos of parents, grandparents, and witnesses!
• A collection of recipes, solicited in advance from a selection of guests with culinary expertise.
• Children's drawings depicting the bride and groom.
• Funny greetings and congratulations from the best man and maid of honor.
• Travel recommendations for guests and, of course, especially for the couple's honeymoon.
• Quiz: How much do you know about the bride and groom?
• Puzzles (for kids and puzzle lovers): Can you find the 5 mistakes in the picture, maze paths, wedding Sudoku, and the like? If the bride is pregnant, you can also include a baby name puzzle.

Austria Wedding's Tip for the Wedding Newspaper

The list of ideas we’ve shared is definitely a great starting point for creating great content for your wedding newspaper. But remember: Your own ideas are always the best! Before you start putting things into action, have a thorough brainstorming session with the wedding newspaper editorial team (aka your group of friends). For a good brainstorming session, all you need is a large poster and lots of colorful Post-its, which you can then fill with ideas one by one. Once everyone has shared their ideas, you’ll see that you’ll come up with lots of ideas—and, above all, some surprising ones!

Newspaper Distribution on the Wedding Day

Have you actually thought about how and when you want to hand out the wedding newspaper? A good time to distribute the wedding newspaper is as follows: after the main course or the evening buffet—because then there’s usually still a bit of a wait before the dessert buffet opens or dessert is served at the table. By then, the guests will be a bit tired from the meal and will be happy to have something to read as they sit at their tables.

And how should the newspaper be distributed? Either you strap on a vendor’s tray yourselves and dress up as newspaper vendors—or you leave the work to the younger guests, who are usually more than happy to take on the task. However, there should always be children present who are already good at math and can give change; after all, you probably want to sell your newspaper.

What happens to the proceeds from the sale of the wedding newspaper?

You can use part of the money to cover printing costs; the rest goes to the bride and groom. Of course, you can also reward the children who helped out or donate all the money to a charitable organization. It’s entirely up to you and the bride and groom!

Timing is everything—even when it comes to the wedding newspaper!

Finally, just a quick reminder: To make sure everything gets done on time so you can enjoy a great wedding gift in the end, be sure to allow enough time for planning and putting together the wedding newspaper. If you start planning the wedding newspaper as soon as the couple has sent out their invitations, you’ll definitely be on the safe side. In general, it’s still possible to design a beautiful newspaper even three months before the wedding date—that way, you’ll still have a good buffer for any unforeseen circumstances.

But the more time you factor in, the better. After all, be prepared for the fact that you’ll have to follow up with some of the people who are supposed to provide you with text and input. And here’s another tip from Austria Wedding, based on our many years of experience: Set deadlines for submitting text and photos right from the start—it helps immensely!

With all these tips and ideas for content, plus some good time management, the wedding newspaper will be in your hands well in advance, and you’ll be able to bring great joy to the bride and groom as well as the guests!

And now: On your keyboards, get set, go …