My favourite Wedding Newspaper ideas: Top Tips and Inspiration for Creating Unique and Personalised Wedding Newspapers, Programmes, Keepsakes and Favours

Wedding newspapers are a perfect addition to any wedding because they can be truly creative and unique, whilst helping you to share important information about your day and show off your personalities. Not only that, They can be used for save the dates, invites, order of service, thank yous, destination weddings [and pretty much anything else you can think of] while keeping all the information in one place and acting as a keepsake that your guests will love, honestly, wedding newspapers tick all the boxes!

I've created 100s of Bespoke Wedding Newspapers since I started this business in 2016 so I've lots of ideas, tips and inspiration to share with you...you're welcome!

Photo by Carmel Teresa photography

Top Tips, Ideas and Things to Consider when Designing Wedding Newspapers

This might be controversial, but wedding newspapers, do not need to look like newspapers, there is so much scope for creating a design that fits in with your day and any theme and colours you might have. You can have so much fun with this. But even if you want it to look like a newspaper, there are still some things to think about:

Fonts

If you look at newspapers, they have lots of fonts styles and these change over time. The is not one type or style of newspaper e.g. some are modern, some are vintage, some are retro. Think about what styles you like and what fits your plans and personality the best.

pro tip: There are lots of fonts use can install and use for free or to buy at dafont.com and creativemarket.com.

Colours

If you're having a newspaper style, do you want it in black and white or with colour? If colour, which colours would you like? If you're having an alternative wedding newspaper, what colours will go with your theme and day, I recommend choosing at least 5 colours.

pro tip: Create a palette at coolors.co to help you.

Photos

If including photos, how many will you need? For collages I recommend 15-20 photos to choose from in a variety of landscape and portrait [you will likely need to crop them too to fit the available space]. Whilst newspaper printing is forgiving with the quality of photos, I always recommend using the best quality and high res where possible or making bad quality photos small so that they don't appear pixelated when printed.

Pro tip: Remember a screen is usually 2+ times pixelated when printed, so don't rely on what your design looks like on a screen to know if a design will be pixelated when printed.

Additional Elements

Adding additional elements or clipart to your wedding newspaper design can really bring your wedding theme to life. There is so much out there to buy or if you're handy with a graphics package, you can create your own.

pro tip: There are lots of fonts use can install and use for free or to buy at dafont.com and creativemarket.com.

Style

Your wedding theme is likely to be based around your style and personalities, but either way, make sure that whatever you design for your wedding newspaper, make sure it fits who you are and that your family and friends will pick it up and say "This is so them!".

Photo by John Scofield photography

When Should I Give out My Wedding Newspapers and How Many do I Need?

When to give your wedding newspapers out really depends on your plans, but here are the most common ways:

post - This mostly applies to save the dates, invites and thank yous. Folded, tabloid newspapers fit perfectly in an A4 envelope, so it's really easy to post them.
Leave in rooms - This mostly applies to destination weddings or if you have lots of accommodation at your venue. You'd likely have information about the weekend/itinerary etc. too.
give out at your wedding ceremony - There are a few ways I'd recommend for on your wedding day before your ceremony. You can ask an usher or member of the wedding party to hand them out when people arrive, you can put them in a basket/box/place for people to help themselves or you can put them on the chairs. It just depends on which you prefer.
Put on your reception table - You may add them to the place setting for each person or have a copy or few copies in the centre of the table.

If your wedding Newspaper is for on the day, I always recommend that you need one per person, this is based purely on the logistics of giving them to guests. if your wedding newspapers can be posted, then one per household is perfect.

As a general rule, the number you need, if based on people, will be one each. Alternatively if based on something else [e.g. table, household, room etc.], then you base the amount of wedding newspapers required on that figure. it really depends on your plans and how you're intending to use the wedding newspapers.

pro tip: If you're not sure if you need one per person, think about when you are giving them out, you need to figure out whether this needs to be managed. E.g. If you want to hand them one per family/couple before your ceremony, does the person handing them out know everyone to be able to know who is with who and give them out correctly? Your guests won't know it's one per couple/family and it could lead to confusion or them taking more than they need and then someone else missing out. If this sounds like it could happen, avoid the pressure and stress by having one copy for each person.

Photo by Kate Ventress photography

How Should I Order the Content in my Wedding Newspaper?

I always tell the people I work with to imagine a newspaper, because it has a specific format. Generally it has the story of the day, followed by the most important information, then the fun stuff. If you translate this to a wedding newspaper, it would look something like this:

intro or headline story and thank you to guests
Important info like timeline, events, menu, travel and logistics
Fun stuff, basically all the personalised things about you, your love story and your VIP guests [see more on those below].

Photo by Chris Giles photography

Essential Information to Include in your Wedding Newspapers

There are some things that you should always include in your wedding newspapers [if applicable], here are some of them:

ceremony date and time
location/venue details
Your names
For invitations: Accommodation, map, travel info, parking info, food info/menu, how to rsvp, contact details
Order of service/on the day programme: Timeline, menu, any need to know info
Thank yous: Thank you message, QR link to online galleries
Destination/weekend weddings: Itinerary, contact details.

If you're looking for more ideas of what to include in your wedding newspapers, I've got a full guide here.

Photo by Daniel Ackerley Photography

How to Include your Love Story in your Wedding Newspapers

All of your wedding guests are here to see you start the next chapter of your love story, so adding your story so far into your wedding newspaper is the perfect way to ensure your family and friends love it so much, that they'll keep it as a keepsake! here are my favourite ideas.

Photos

You can use photos to illustrate how long you've been together or special moments you've had together [eg buying a house, getting a dog etc.].

Engagement/Proposal Story

Everyone has an engagement story, but does everyone know it? Share it with your guests.

How You Met

Do you have a funny or interesting story of how you met or your first date, you definitely should add it in if you do.

Timeline

A timeline is the perfect way to illustrate your time together, highlighting key moment in a diagram, with photos or written as a story.

Photo by Naomi Barker photography

How to Add Fun and Personality to your Wedding Newspapers

If me, the whole reason of Wedding Newspapers is to make it as fun and personal as possible. You can do this in an infinite number of ways, here are a few of my favourites.

Crossword/Quiz

Make the questions about yourselves and Wedding VIPs. This also acts as a great conversation starter and ice breaker for guests who don't know each other to ask if they know the answers, not everyone will know all the answers.

Classified Ads

You can poke fun at your quirks and personalities by adding funny classifieds and adverts. E.g. an ad for watches if you're known for always being late.

Jobs/Hobbies

Think of how you can add elements of your career or interests. This could be a simple case of adding elements or images or you could recreate and personalise something in a style of [e.g. If you work as airline crew, you could add a travel ticket with personalised information].

Spotify Playlist

Music is likely to play a part in your day somewhere, so create a spotify playlist for your guests. You could base it around your ceremony or first dance music, or simply include the playlist you had playing during the day/evening.

Pro tip: You can create a spotify QR code in the app for any playlist, so you can use this in your design for people to scan.

If you'd like my help to design newspapers for you, have a look at my wedding newspapers page here.

Photo by Rachel Burt photography

How to Include Family, Friends and Loved Ones in your Wedding Newspapers

Including your family and friends in your wedding newspaper is a really lovely way of showing them how much they mean to you. Here are a few ideas on how you could do this.

Wedding Party/VIPs

Not all of your guests will know all the people in your wedding party so use this as an opportunity to tell people. Include a photo with their name and role. If you want to you can add how you met, how long you've known each other or a funny story.

Parents/Guardians

For most people, the people who brought them up play a big role in their wedding, so putting a personal message to them or maybe telling a story about them is a lovely way to honour this. If you have parents that are still married, you could include their wedding photo as a nice touch.

Remembering Loved Ones

For many people, there is a loved one no longer here to share their wedding day. Maybe people opt to include a poem or paragraph about the person, or even simply just a photo with their name. I've also included photos from weddings days of grandparents who are no longer here too which I thought was a lovely way to remember them.

Pets

If you're anything like me, my cat is the biggest part of my family. Our pets mean so much but often get left out of weddings on the day. A great way to include them is to write a story [with a photo] as if written by them with a headline like "My parents are getting married". It's a really good way to get a laugh and you can include funny anecdotes of their habits too.