Guidelines for personalizing a poem Don't make your poem too lengthy as it might not fit on the card. You can use up to 900 characters including spaces. Your poem will look best if you limit it to 42 characters across (Including spaces) and 30 lines down (Including stanza breaks). It's not a good idea to use all capital letters for a word. In the script font we use it looks awkward. If you want to use your wedding date it will look best at the bottom of the poem. Your wedding date will look best spelled out. Example: September 8, 2004 instead of 08-08-04. 8th (th) is also not advisable. Be careful when pasting a poem from an other program, some programs will capitalize all first words of sentences even when it is grammatically incorrect. Check your poem for spelling and grammar mistakes. Please do not submit copywrited material for printing unless you have permission from the author. Ideas for personalizing a poem Read through all New Beginnings poems and get ideas for your own poem. Some of 'New Beginnings' poems that are to a man are wonderful also for a woman if you just change a couple of words. Mix stanzas from different poems. Not all sentiments must rhyme, just write from your heart. Use the recipients name in your poem by using a salutation such as Dear Mom or Dear Cathy. Use a poem title and use your wedding date at the bottom of your poem. Example: November 28, 2001 not 11-28-01. Sign your name to your poem, use Love, Best Wishes, Sincerely, All My Love, etc. How will my finished poem card look? Exactly like our pre-printed poem cards. We print on the same card stock with the Lily of the Valley, or Ivy design as is on our pre-printed poem cards. Ivy for the men's cards and Lily of the Valley for the ladies' poems. All poem text will be aligned right, just like our pre-printed poems. We will print your poem in the same style type font that we use for our pre-printed poems. May I submit a poem in a different language? Yes. Please also e-mail a translation (with your name and " translation" in the subject line) for our formatting reference. contact us Ordering personalized poems by e-mail When ordering your hankies by e-mail, be sure to mention that you want to personalize a poem or have an original poem printed. submit the poem or poems via our contact form. Put your name in the subject box and the style of hanky you want each poem to go with above each poem.