1. Start ten weeks out
Printing and delivery take about a week, and you want the box in your hands two weeks before the wedding. Working back, the writing needs to be finished five weeks before the day. Start ten weeks out and you will not be laying out pages the night before your hen do.
2. Choose a size and page count
A tabloid, 289mm by 380mm, looks most like a real newspaper and suits ceremony chairs. Page counts go up in fours. Eight pages is enough for most weddings and twelve gives you a photo spread. Resist sixteen unless you have a lot to say, because thin content spread over many pages reads worse than a tight eight.
3. Draw a flat plan
Editors plan a paper on a single sheet with a box for each page. Draw eight boxes and write one or two items in each. The front page and the centre pages are the ones people look at longest, so put your best material there. My list of thirty things to put in a wedding newspaper will help you fill the boxes.
4. Interview each other
This step makes the biggest difference. Sit down separately with a friend who asks you both the same ten questions and records the answers on a phone. You will say things out loud that you would never think to write down, and the differences between your two accounts are the story.
Questions that produce good answers: What do you remember about the day you met? When did you know? What does the other one do that nobody else sees? What nearly went wrong with the proposal?
5. Write it as news
- Put the most interesting fact in the first sentence. Chronological order is the enemy.
- Use full names on first mention and first names afterwards.
- Quote people word for word, with "said" and nothing fancier.
- Keep paragraphs to one or two sentences, as newspapers do.
- Write headlines in the present tense with a verb: "Bride finally agrees to take husband's Netflix password".
- Aim for 350 to 450 words for a main story on a tabloid page with a photograph.
6. Lay it out
Canva is free and is what most couples use. Affinity Publisher and Adobe InDesign give more control over columns. My wedding newspaper template opens in Canva or PowerPoint with the page size and margins already set, and the front page is free. Whichever you use, follow three rules. Set body text in a serif typeface at 9 or 10 point, in four or five columns. Use one typeface family for headlines throughout. Leave a margin of at least 15mm on every edge, because newsprint presses cannot print to the edge of the sheet.
Making a wedding newspaper in Canva
Create a custom design of 289mm by 380mm, or import a template at that size. Add one page for each page of the paper. Canva has no linked columns, so give each column its own text box and fill them one at a time. When you finish, choose Share, Download, PDF Print. The printer's 15mm margin still applies, so keep text and pictures away from the edges.
7. Prepare the photographs
Newsprint soaks up ink, so pictures print darker and flatter than they look on screen. Brighten each photograph a little and increase the contrast before placing it. Use the original files, since pictures saved from social media are too small to print well at any size above a few centimetres.
8. Proofread on paper
Print the pages at home and read them with a pen. Then give them to someone who has not seen them before and ask that person to check every name, date and time against the invitation. Errors hide on screens and show up on paper.
9. Print one copy first
Export a PDF to the printer's specification and order a single copy. It costs about £30 and shows you exactly how the colours and folds turn out. Then order the full run. For current prices by page count and quantity, see how much a wedding newspaper costs, and for file set-up see printing sizes, paper and prices.
If you run out of weekends
Plenty of couples start one of these and find the writing is the part that stalls. If that happens, I can take over: I interview you both, write and design the paper and have it printed and delivered. See how it works.