Ceremony

Dealing With Wedding Day Concerns

 in Ceremony / Weddings  tagged wedding / wedding concerns / wedding day / wedding problems / weddings by

Wedding day concerns are common and to be expected. Your wedding day is probably the largest and most formal event you’ve ever planned. On top of that, it marks a milestone moment in your life. Dealing with wedding day concerns in advance can make your day more enjoyable and memorable for you.

Some of your wedding day concerns can be addressed by putting contingency plans in place. For example, if you are planning an outdoor ceremony, what will you do in case of inclement weather? Extreme heat, cold, wind, or rain or thunderstorms can torpedo your dreamed of outdoor ceremony. But if you ensure that you have an acceptable indoor plan, you can roll with whatever weather presents itself on your wedding day. Since weather is beyond our control, it makes sense to plan for the worst and hope for the best, ensuring that you can enjoy your ceremony no matter the weather.

There are a number of wedding day concerns that you can’t plan for, but if you consider them ahead of time you will be prepared to gracefully roll with them if they happen. An example here is the common concern expressed by both brides and grooms, “What if I get emotional or cry during the vows?” My response is always that there is no problem with heartfelt emotion. Practically, the best thing you can do is take a moment to compose yourself and take a few deep, calming breaths. If you or your partner or an attendant can have a tissue handy, that can also help. Remember that a pause that seems incredibly long to you is likely only 15 or 20 seconds. Your guests will wait for you. No one is going anywhere until the ceremony concludes, and recognizing the significance of the moment with some honest emotion is never a problem.

A general wedding day concern is, “What if everything isn’t perfect?” It’s understandable that you want this important day that you’ve been working toward for a year or more to be perfect. But the fact is that there are many moving parts to the day, from the venue to the musicians, to the catering to the weather, to the guests. Most of these you don’t have direct control over on the wedding day, and odds are that something isn’t going to go the way you imagined. Once you’ve planned the day to the best of your ability it’s time to sit back and enjoy the ride. If something goes wrong, ask for help resolving the issue if possible, or just smile and roll with it. Sometimes those snafus make for memorable moments and great stories for years to come.

Considering possible wedding day concerns ahead of time allows you to plan for them where possible. And even just knowing about the possible problems before the wedding day can allow you to accept any imperfections and keep your focus on the important part of the day – making your public declaration of love and commitment to the person you plan to spend your future with. Everything else comes in a distant second. So keep your perspective and have a great day!

Involving Others in Your Ceremony

 in Ceremony / Guests / Rituals / Weddings  tagged wedding / wedding ceremony / wedding guests / wedding rituals by

Involving others in your ceremony is a great way to share your happiness on your wedding day. This is the day when you voice your promises to each other in front of family and friends. It is a community event, and including loved ones in more active ways is a great way to feel the love they have for you. There are a few different ways you can involve others in your ceremony. For example:

Before the ceremony begins:

  • You can ask someone to ensure that all honored loved ones get their corsages and boutonnierres.
  • You can charge one or more people with the job of welcoming guests and directing them to the ceremony space. This is especially helpful if you don’t have ushers as part of your wedding party, or if the parking and ceremony spaces are not in sight of each other.

During the ceremony:

  • Involving others in your ceremony can begin with the processional. You can invite grandparents, siblings or other close family members (perhaps an aunt who helped raise you) to be part of the processional.
  • Inviting someone to offer a reading is a common way to honor someone close to you, but you can also have a friend or family member offer the final wishes on behalf of your assembled guests.

If you wish to involve all of your guests in the ceremony, that is possible, too. Consider a ring warming ritual where your rings are passed among the guests. They hold the rings for a moment and silently express a wish for your marriage or imbue them with their love. When you exchange the rings, they represent not only the love of your partner, but the love and support of the important people in your lives.

Ring Warming ritual ©Midwest LifeShots Photography

A wishing pebbles ritual is another possibility. Here, your guests hold small stones (or shells or other keepsake you wish to provide) and under the direction of your celebrant, they imbue the pebble with wishes for your marriage. These stones can be individually gifted to you and the wishes shared during the actual ceremony if there are fewer than approximately 30 guests, or can be collected and shared with you as you greet your guests after the ceremony.

Wishing Pebbles

And finally, involving your guests can be as simple as them placing their thumbprint/signature on a poster as they leave the ceremony. This tradition comes from Quaker weddings where all guests sign the wedding certificate. A decorative copy of your vows, or a tree or heart shape can be provided to collect the contributions of your guests and later hung in your home as a reminder of all the special people who shared in your important day.

Thumbprint Ritual

Involving others in your ceremony brings them into your wedding day as active participants, demonstrating their love and support for you. It also offers you the opportunity to honor special people with visible roles. The day is all about you as a couple, but it is also about you as part of a loving community. Make the most of it.

Personalizing Your Unity Ritual

 in Ceremony / Personalization / Rituals / Unity Rituals / Weddings  tagged personal ceremony / personalized rituals / personalized wedding / unity ritual / wedding ceremony by

Personalizing your unity ritual is a wonderful way to share part of yourselves with your guests during your wedding ceremony. Unity rituals usually follow your exchange of vows and rings and are meant to be symbolize your coming together in marriage. There are a number of meaningful unity rituals that you can choose from, but creating a new ritual that reflects you, your interests or values can add extra significance to your ceremony.

Through the years I’ve had the opportunity to write unity rituals for couples that connected to them in various ways. Here are some examples:

Personalizing Your Unity Ritual – Hot Toddy

Hot toddies: This couple was serving hot toddies as the signature drink at their fall wedding, so we had them build one during the ceremony. We spoke about the sugar representing the sweet and loving moments in their marriage, and the lemon representing the more challenging times they may face together. The alcohol represented the strength of their love and passion for each other, and the hot water reflected the need to provide support and warmth each and every day. The ritual connected their guests to the couple and to the festivities to come. As toasts were raised with the signature drink during the reception, it hearkened back to the ceremony itself.

Personalizing Your Unity Ritual – Craft Beer Sharing

Beer sharing: With many couples enjoying craft beers these days, this unity ritual may have broad appeal, but it was especially meaningful for this couple – he ran a craft brewery and had invented the beer, she had named this particular brew “Sunny Days”, and they shared it and toasted their marriage with it during their ceremony.

Personalizing Your Unity Ritual – Cookies and Milk

Cookies and milk: This unity ritual shared an intimate part of the couple’s lives with their guests. Each day they shared milk and cookies at the kitchen table as they shared the events of the day with each other. They each had their favorite cookie. One needed non-dairy milk. They will carry these preferences and needs into their marriage, retaining their individuality. But by connecting each day they will ensure that their marriage and life together remains their focus.

Personalizing your unity ritual as these couples did allows your guests to know more about you as individuals and a couple, and connects the ritual to you in a memorable way. Whenever they share a hot toddy, toast with a beer or share milk and cookies it reminds them in a subtle way of their wedding day, of the promises they made to each other, and of the life they are building together. Let your unity ritual be just as powerful for you.

Vow Renewal Celebrations – To Show Your Love

 in Celebration / Ceremony / Personalization / Vow Renewals  tagged vow renewal ceremonies / vow renewals by

Vow Renewal celebrations are an opportunity to show your love once more. There are many reasons that you might consider a vow renewal ceremony as articulated in this article from Weddingbee. Just like your first wedding, a vow renewal ceremony can be whatever you want it to be.

If you didn’t have the ceremony of your dreams when you first married, this might be the opportunity to gather family and friends and do it up big. Perhaps military service, medical issues, finances or other constraints led to a simple certificate signing without any ceremony at all. Or you chose to elope and didn’t have the opportunity to celebrate with those people important to you. Now that your circumstances have changed, why not create the special moments and memories you missed the first time around? A ceremony complete with readings, rituals, music and a special walk down the aisle may be perfect for you.

A smaller, intimate ceremony may be called for if you are coming through a challenging time as a couple, or if you are focusing on remembering what you love about each other. Perhaps you will include a few special family members, but this kind of ceremony might be for just the two of you and your celebrant as you acknowledge the difficulties of the past and commit to moving forward as a couple, centered on your love for each other.

And finally, milestone anniversaries of successful marriages are definitely worth celebrating with vow renewal celebrations. This is an opportunity to bring in touches from your first wedding – perhaps say the same vows, use the same reading, or invite some of your wedding party to join you again. But this is also an opportunity to reflect on your successful marriage by including your children, by reminiscing on some of the highlights (and challenges you’ve faced together and overcome), and by making new vows to each other that honor the past and look to the future, too.

No matter the reason for your vow renewal celebrations, the ceremony will once again be the highlight of the day, and can be whatever you want it to be. You are limited only by your preferences and choices as you celebrate again the love you share, so make it special, personal, and authentically yours.

Being True to Yourselves

 in Ceremony / Weddings  tagged ceremony / certificate signing / elopement wedding / simple wedding / wedding / wedding ceremony by

Being true to yourselves guarantees that you will have a successful wedding day. It’s important to respect your personalities, style, finances, and priorities when planning your wedding. Doing so creates an experience that you are comfortable with on many levels and can remember fondly. My daughter-in-law coined the phrase that she and my son “win at weddings” to capture this idea. And you can feel that way, too.

The centerpiece of any wedding day is the ceremony – it is, after all the marrying part that is the reason for the entire experience. Your ceremony can be as simple or elaborate as you want. Options range from meeting the minimal requirements of your state’s marriage laws to constructing a ceremony full of personal and meaningful moments. Being true to yourselves when deciding what kind of ceremony you will have means that you can relax and enjoy the experience.

If you want to be married quickly with little fanfare and expense, a certificate signing might be the right answer for you. Meeting with a celebrant and your witnesses (required in Minnesota), you can be married and the paperwork signed in under five minutes. This kind of ceremony can happen at your home or nearly any public location – park, coffee shop, etc. If timing is critical, finances are tight, or you simply don’t like being the center of attention, this can be a good choice for you. And remember, if you decide you want a larger celebration at a later date, a vow renewal ceremony with family and friends can always be arranged.

Being true to yourselves could also mean planning a very small, intimate gathering that includes a simple ceremony. This allows for an exchange of vows and (optionally) rings, and provides a brief “ceremony experience”. Again, this can happen in your home or a small private room at a restaurant, or even in a park. If your priorities are to marry your partner and celebrate with an intimate circle of family and friends, this might be your perfect wedding.

Perhaps you’ve always dreamed of a big wedding surrounded by many loved ones and friends, and want a personalized ceremony that reflects you as a couple and launches you into married life. Being true to yourself then means investing time, effort, and of course money to plan and execute a day that fulfills that vision.

All these options are available to you. Picking the one that fits you and your circumstances best allows you to truly be “in the moment” on your wedding day. Being true to yourselves will always feel most comfortable and right. Then you can focus on your partner, the love you share, and the life you will build together. Best wishes for a long and happy marriage.