Ceremony

Creative Use of Music

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Creative use of music can enhance your wedding ceremony experience. I recently read an article in Brides magazine that sparked a few thoughts for new ways to add meaning to your ceremony with music.

Look up the top wedding song for the years you and your fiance(e) were born in the article linked above. Maybe you want to include those songs in the prelude or postlude music lists (while your guests are being seated or as they are leaving the ceremony space). This is an interesting way to bridge the past and present in your ceremony.

If your parents are still married, a sweet tribute to them would be to have the top wedding song from the year they married played as they enter the ceremony space. This is easy to do for the groom’s parents as they usually enter the ceremony space together, but can be a little trickier for the bride’s parents. There is a graceful way to make this a special moment for your parents even if your dad will be walking you up the aisle. Your parents can enter together to the song from their wedding year, share a hug and kiss, have your mom sit down and your dad return to the back to prepare to escort you in.

An even more personal approach for the parents would be to have a conversation with them about their wedding ceremony. Ask what they remember about it – readings, music, anything special they included in their ceremony? If they remember a special song and it works with your ceremony plans, playing it in their honor as they enter could create a very special moment for all of you. At the very least, sharing the conversation and memories with your parents will be a bonding moment for everyone.

Creative use of music is one more way to make your wedding ceremony uniquely yours. Make sure to keep track of the music used in your wedding ceremony so you can share a similar discussion with your children years from now as they plan their weddings, too.

New Themes for Your Wedding

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Consider new themes for your wedding to give it a fresh and personal look. I’m not a proponent of contrived themes in wedding ceremonies, but having a unifying idea or thread that runs through your ceremony can pull it all together and connect it to you as a couple. While we’re all familiar with holiday themes around Christmas, New Years and even the Fourth of July, consider utilizing some of the natural holidays of the year if your ceremony will take place near one of them.

I’m referring to the Winter and Summer Solstices and the Spring and Fall Equinoxes. Today marks the Spring Equinox – the day when the hours of daylight and darkness are equal. If this was your wedding day, the concepts of balance and equality in your marriage could be used. The idea of maintaining balance within yourself as an individual and as a part of this couple could be meaningful for some.

Summer Solstice ceremonies could invoke the image of the light that your love brings to your life. Or the growth that the sun’s light provides to the natural world, and the growth that your love will experience through marriage.

High summer wedding at Rochester Golf and Country Club

New themes for weddings around the Fall Equinox could focus on the beauty and colors the Fall season brings, the richness of the harvest of your love, or your confidence in the constancy of the cycles of life and love.

If you opt for a mid-December wedding, you can use the Winter Solstice as a metaphor for the confidence you have in your love as never ending and always changing. Candles in your decor and rituals could be lovely additions to your ceremony.

Whatever your wedding date, especially if you are having an outdoor wedding, consider new themes for your wedding based on the natural calendar and the natural world. There are many parallels to be drawn and ideas you can leverage throughout your ceremony via music, decor, readings and ritual to connect the ideas of love and marriage to the world around us.

New Ideas for Ceremony Backdrops

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New ideas for ceremony backdrops can focus and freshen your ceremony venue. Outdoor ceremony spaces, while wonderful and green, can be so open as to be unfocused. If a natural backdrop – a row of evergreens or colorful flowerbeds isn’t available – there are ways to create a focal point for your ceremony.

You may think indoor ceremony spaces avoid this issue, but in many cases you would be wrong. I’ve been in many ballroom spaces where the wall behind the ceremony space is spattered with lit exit signs, banks of light switches, or even in one unfortunate space, restroom doors. These serve as distractions for the guests, but also mar every picture taken during the ceremony.

This article from Brides.com offers some new and creative ideas for ceremony backdrops.

Ceremony backdrops can also provide an opportunity for you to personalize your ceremony space. Use of color, materials and images that are significant to you as a couple allow the ceremony backdrop to both frame your ceremony and communicate something about you. How wonderful to capture that as part of your ceremony message.

Use Music to Set the Mood

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Use music to set the mood for your wedding ceremony and wedding day. Taking time to select music that has meaning for you is another way to personalize your wedding ceremony. Yes, your music provider – DJ or live musicians – can provide generic prelude music before your ceremony begins, and can tell you what the most popular choices are for music during the ceremony, too, but why choose those for your once in a lifetime (hopefully) wedding ceremony.

Rather than using the same music other couples are selecting, take a little time to choose cuts that are meaningful to you. Maybe you remember the first song you danced to. Or there’s a song with lyrics that really describe your feelings for each other. Or there’s a certain style of music that gets your toes tapping. Those are the pieces you want to hear on your wedding day.

I worked with one couple who were big K-pop (Korean pop music) fans. Their first trip together was to Canada to see their favorite group perform. So they chose to exit their wedding ceremony to a wonderful upbeat K-pop song. Another couple were big country music fans and found lovely ballads for the processional, and a boot stomping selection for the recessional.

Whether your preference is for traditional, classic music, big band, pop, country or even metal, use music to set the mood for your wedding ceremony. It will make the experience more personal, more memorable, and more authentically you.

Ceremony Venue Selection

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Ceremony venue selection is one of the earliest tasks when planning your wedding day. So, if you’re one of the new Valentine’s Day engagements – Congratulations to you, by the way – you’ll soon be looking at venues for your wedding ceremony. Outdoor ceremonies continue in popularity, and can be beautiful, but there are some extra things to consider when visiting outdoor ceremony venues. For example:

1. Bad weather – is there an indoor backup space at same location? If not, how would your guests know where to go, and if you’ve moved the ceremony indoors somewhere?

2. Position of the sun – will it be in your eyes? The eyes of your guests? This can be a real distraction if you select a ceremony time anywhere near sunset.

3. Accessibility – are the distance from parking and the terrain to be covered comfortable for your guests? Certainly consider elderly guests, but a broken leg can happen to anyone at any time.

Ceremony venue selection

4. Privacy – is there a place for the wedding party to gather and line up for the processional that is out of view from the guests? Some venues are so open that there’s no place to begin the processional from, and guests can see the entire wedding party at all times.

5. Seating – is seating provided for the guests? Do you have to set it up, or is that handled for you? Unless you are having a very brief (10 minutes or less) ceremony, your guests will be more comfortable if they can be seated. And arranging chairs is an additional task that your wedding party doesn’t need to be handling on a busy wedding day.

6. Facilities – are there bathrooms in the vicinity for you and your guests to use? Especially important for guests who have driven a distance to be with, you want them to be comfortable upon arrival.

7. Insects – are there any provision for bug control? I’ve seen guests spend most of the ceremony swatting at mosquitos, bees, and small biting insects. Memorable, but not the way you want it to be. See if it is possible for the venue to do a “bug bombing” of the ceremony site in advance of your ceremony time.

Using the considerations above, potential ceremony venues can be evaluated in a fair and logical way. Ceremony venue selection can soon be checked off your to do list, and you’ll be moving on to planning other aspects of your ideal wedding day.