Rituals

Extending Your Wedding Ceremony Experience

 in Celebration / Ceremony / Rituals / Weddings  tagged wedding ceremony / wedding guests by

Extending your wedding ceremony experience can make your ceremony fresh and memorable for you and your guests, and get your celebration off to a great start. Extending your wedding ceremony doesn’t mean making the ceremony itself longer, but rather offers ways to surround your ceremony with things for your guests to see and do.

Some couples are opting to offer a social hour – or half hour – before the ceremony begins. They invite guests, for example, to arrive at 4:00pm for a brief social time before a 4:30pm start time. While this is a nice idea, it can be tricky to get people to stop socializing and shift to a ceremony mindset. Know your guests here, and decide if this is a good idea for your group.

Extending your wedding ceremony experience can also be accomplished by showing a video of you as a couple before the ceremony begins. Some couples show this kind of video during their reception, but pictures showing the growth and path of your relationship can be a great introduction to your ceremony. You probably don’t want to include the “cute kids” pictures, but rather focus on the two of you together, the experiences you’ve shared, and your life together. Backed with some of your favorite music, this can be an entertaining interlude for your guests as they wait for the ceremony to begin. A caveat with this suggestion – if your ceremony is taking place outdoors, make sure the video can be seen in the sunlight.

Guests show support for marriage by adding thumbprints

And a final way to extend your ceremony experience is to introduce the thumbprints poster you want your guests to contribute to in place of a guestbook. These have become popular, but can be more meaningful if introduced during the ceremony as a community ritual demonstrating your guests’ support for your marriage. You and your wedding party can place your thumbprints on the poster during the ceremony, and guests can be invited by your officiant to add their thumbprints on the way into the social hour/reception space. You’ll get much better participation with this positioning and invitation from the officiant, and will have a more complete poster to hang in your home as a remembrance of the special people who shared in your special day.

As these three examples show, with a little “out of the box” thinking extending your wedding ceremony experience in ways that make it more enjoyable, more personal and more meaningful for your guests is fairly easily accomplished. Happy ceremony planning!

Meaningful Unity Rituals

 in Ceremony / Rituals / Weddings  tagged unity ritual / wedding ceremony by

Meaningful unity rituals can add a memorable touch to your wedding ceremony. Along with your exchange of vows and rings, the unity ritual serves as a highlight of the ceremony when it is done well. So how do you ensure that your unity ritual is meaningful and significant?

Meaningful unity rituals serve a purpose. The purpose is to visually illustrate the vows you’ve just exchanged – blending your lives, joining your lives, becoming one, bringing your individuality to your marriage, and respecting each others goals and preferences can each be demonstrated with unity rituals. The more personal the ritual, the more meaningful it can be.

There are a few well known unity rituals – the unity candle lit from tapers representing your single lives now joining together, and the sand ceremony blending different colored sand showing the blending of your lives into one. They are fine, and if you like them, you should have them in your ceremony. There is another set of unity rituals gaining popularity including handfasting, love letters and tree plantings. They, too, should be part of your ceremony if you like the symbolism involved in them.

Love Letters Unity Ritual

If you select one of the newer unity rituals, and especially if you have a unity ritual created just for you, it is essential that the symbolism and meaning be explained to your guests while you perform the ritual.

A story was shared with me regarding a recent wedding. There was a unity ritual, because the couple moved to a table and did something with dirt from two containers, but no one explained what exactly they were doing or what it was supposed to signify. That unity ritual was a failure from the perspective of the guests. Hopefully it had meaning for the couple, but because it wasn’t explained the guests felt left out and not respected. Maybe the soil came from their childhood homes and would be used to plant a tree outside their own home, thus connecting their histories and families. Or maybe they had gathered the soil on vacations they’ve shared and it represented their love of travel. Or maybe the soil represented the basis for their marriage – as the soil supports and nourishes a tree it surrounds, so will they work to support and nourish their marriage going forward. If the symbolism this ritual held for the couple had been explained, the guests would have understood it, would have learned about the priorities and focus of the couple, and the ritual would have become a significant part of the ceremony.

If you don’t like any of the “standard” unity rituals, or any of the “newer” unity rituals, and don’t want to explore the possibility of a personal unity ritual, that’s OK, too. Unity rituals are a totally optional part of the ceremony. I like them because they involve movement and action for the couple which is visually interesting, and if well explained, can add meaning to the ceremony. But they aren’t for everyone. You can choose to move from your exchange of vows and rings to the closing elements of the ceremony. Simple ceremonies can be lovely and can keep the focus on your promises/vows which can be very touching, too. Just remember to ensure meaningful unity rituals for yourselves and your guests if you choose to include them in your wedding ceremony.

Lock Your Commitment to Love

 in Ceremony / Rituals / Weddings by

The Love Lock unity ritual has been around for awhile, but I had the opportunity to include it in a wedding ceremony for the first time recently. This ritual is said to have originated long ago in China, but the history is vague. It started to become popular more recently in places like Paris where loving couples locked a padlock onto a gate or chain as a permanent reminder of their commitment to each other.

Since most wedding ceremonies don’t take place near a fence or gate, creative and industrious people now offer free standing, decorative items that a lock can be placed onto. Usually after your exchange of vows and rings, you work together to lock a padlock onto a structure like a plaque or sculpture that can later be displayed in your home. The significance is that you have opened your hearts to each other and are now locking your love and hearts together forever in marriage. Some sets made for this ritual provide locks without any keys, but if your set has a key or keys, they are discarded after the lock is closed so there is no way to unlock it in the future.

Sample Props for the Love Lock Unity Ritual

Close up of love lock in place after the ritual

If you choose to include the Love Lock ritual, you might also consider readings that use lock imagery, or “key to my heart” phrasing as a way to carry the theme through your ceremony. The Love Lock ritual is a simple but visual way to recall your commitment to each other, and is a welcome addition to the growing number of unity ritual options available to you as you plan your wedding ceremony.