Because many of our wedding guests barely had a chance to get to know us (thanks to the pandemic!), I designed a little newspaper for them to get to know us better.
Title: PiCO News
Tool: Canva
Size: Mini magazine (170x250 mm)
Time in Development: 100 hours
Developed for: Fun
Audience: Our friends and family who attended #picowedding!
Background
Although my husband and I have been together for more than 5 years at the time we got married, many of our guests never met us as a couple. I am from Thailand, he is from Michigan, and we live in San Francisco Bay Area. So, we don't live near either of our hometowns. Two of the years were also during the pandemic, when traveling was tricky.
I am a big fan of storytelling and a big fan of reading couples' love stories. I figured I'd use my skills as an instructional designer to make a newspaper for us. We gave this newspaper out when our guests exit the chapel so they can read it during the hors d'oeuvres hour. It was a big hit!
Content
Bilingual wedding program: Many of my guests came straight from Thailand and , prior to this trip, they did not use English in their day-to-day life at all. So, to make them feel welcomed at the wedding. I made our wedding program in a bilingual format.
Wedding design: I dedicated the next 3 pages to how we designed our wedding. We put a lot of thoughts and ideas into every little details from the venue to the flavors of the cake. I wanted like the guests to know what each decision meant to us.
My wedding dress: Since I worked with a designer at Lace & Liberty in San francisco to design my custom wedding dress, I wanted to share the sketches and iterations of the dress before it became the dress they were seeing.
Profiles: Since the main purpose of this newspaper is to have the guests know us a little better. I dedicated 4 full pages to our profiles hashing our little facts of who we are - from where we went to school to our favorite songs.
World Tour: We want to share our trips in a fun way, so I took an inspiration from rock band t-shirt and list out all the places we have visited together. I also made a little bingo page for our guests to follow our footsteps and do some fun things that we did like wearing traditional clothing,, driving on a salt flat, and carving pumpkins!
Parents and Grandparents' love stories: These pages are actually the main reason why I wanted to make this newspaper. Both my Thai grandmothers could not come to my wedding in the US but still wanted to include them somehow, so this is how I chose to include them. They both loved it!
Honeymoon: I have always loved the flat lay style so I made a little packing list, as well as an interactive content so our guests can share with us what to pack.
Thai wedding announcement: Yes! We will have another wedding in Thailand. So, we took an opportunity here to invite our American guests to attend our other wedding.
Cullen's Thai corner: And since we invited our guests to visit Thailand, we had to help them prepare for the trip. My husband, Cullen, is learning Thai so he picked 10 wedding-related words for our guests to learn with him.
Anatomy of Thai and American weddings: Although there are some similarities, Thai and American weddings have quite a bit of difference, so I used my instructional design skills to educate our guests on our traditions.
Crosswords: We love games and we think it will be a good way to keep our guests entertained. I also give some answers on our website (scroll down to the bottom of Our Story page!), so they can have a little hunt across medium! This part is fan favorite.
If you'd like to download the PDF version of our wedding newspaper, you can do it here.
Photo Casey Brodley | Printing Newspaper Club | Flowers Eufloria