Weddings

Honored Guests: Helpful Ceremony Preparation Tips

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

Honored guests at a wedding ceremony include grandparents and other immediate family members who are not in your wedding party, along with readers and any other ceremony participants. There are a few ceremony preparations that can ensure these important people in your life feel respected, remembered and special on your wedding day.

First, as you’re placing your floral order, consider which of these people should receive a boutonniere or corsage. This simple but very visible sign marks them as honored guests throughout the entire day.

Next, create a space plan for your honored guests. Lay out the first few rows of your ceremony venue, ensuring a reserved seat for each of these people. You’ll want to mark the reserved area (on both sides of the aisle) with signs or some other indicator of the reserved area. Alternately, you can create individual name tags that can be affixed to each chair. If you opt for this approach, ensure that the ink on the tags will not rub off on clothing, ruining special attire.

With the spaces reserved, the final step is to ensure that your honored guests land in those seats. You’ll want to communicate to them ahead of time (this is a great task to delegate to mothers or other trusted people) so the family members know to look for their seats or identify themselves to the ushers.

Speaking of ushers, they should have a written list or map of the honored guests and where you want them seated. When the guests arrive, even if the rest of the guests are informally seating themselves, the honored guests should be escorted to their reserved seats. This is a bit of special treatment that again will make them feel remembered and respected.

With a little thought and preparation your honored guests will feel special and appreciated as they share in your wedding day. Make sure to get some photos with these folks, too. They make a great keepsake for them and for you.

Selecting Your Wedding Celebrant

 in Celebrant / Ceremony / Officiant / Weddings  tagged selecting celebrant / selecting wedding celebrant / selecting wedding officiant / wedding celebrant / wedding ceremony / wedding officiant by

Selecting your wedding celebrant or officiant is just one of the many decisions you need to make as an engaged couple planning your wedding day. While most couples have ideas of what they want for their wedding reception and party, many draw a blank when thinking about what they want in their ceremony. Allow me to lay out some of the early questions to ask yourselves as you begin the search for your ideal wedding celebrant.

– A good place to start is by asking if you are looking for a religious or secular ceremony. There are specialists in both, and you want to be considering celebrants who can provide the kind of ceremony you want.

– Next, consider if you are looking for someone who will craft a ceremony in response to your wishes and based on you as a couple; someone who provides snippets of ceremonies for your consideration and asks you to basically create your own ceremony by assembling the pieces you want; or someone who can provide a brief, elopement style ceremony or handle the legalities of marriage in your state without any ceremony at all.

– Think about weddings you’ve attended or even seen in movies or on TV. Do you have any things you definitely do or do not want in your ceremony?

– And finally, how would you prefer to engage with the celebrant throughout the ceremony writing process? Do you want them to write the ceremony and deliver it as a surprise on your wedding day, or do you prefer to collaborate with them throughout the process?

Once you have answers to the questions posed above, you’re ready to start looking for your celebrant. The internet and recommendations from friends and relatives are great places to start. Or maybe you attended a wedding recently and liked what you heard from the celebrant. Try to find two or three potential celebrants or officiants to meet with.

Reach out to the potential celebrants with a phone call or email. Let them know when and where your ceremony is to take place and ask about their availability and willingness to speak with you further. I’m a fan of in person meetings whenever possible. Taking an hour or two to meet with prospective celebrants will give you a good idea of how comfortable you are speaking with and working with them.

Feel free to ask any questions you have (and it’s OK not to have questions, too). Let them know what you want and don’t want in your ceremony. When selecting your wedding celebrant realize that while they are the expert in this field, you hold the power to book their services or continue to look for a better match. Your celebrant should be willing and able to listen to you and hear what you are asking for in your ceremony, and have the skills, background, and experience to deliver the ceremony you want.

It’s a good idea to invest time and effort in selecting your wedding celebrant as you will work with them closely leading up to your wedding day. Your ceremony will also be the first event of your wedding day and can set the tone for the rest of the celebration. Now is the perfect time to be selecting your wedding celebrant for 2019 ceremonies as the most popular celebrants book early. Don’t hesitate to reach out and begin the process of finding and selecting your wedding celebrant.

Music Strikes a Sour Note

 in Ceremony / Music / Weddings  tagged ceremony music / music / wedding / wedding ceremony / wedding music by

Music strikes a sour note in your wedding ceremony when it distracts from the ceremony experience instead of enhancing it. In the best of all worlds, your musical selections start and end on cue, are played at an optimal volume, and reflect you as a couple. Ceremony music can be of any genre, can be offered live or recorded, and can go seriously wrong.

My best advice to you is to hire professionals. Whether that is an experienced DJ playing recorded music or live professional musicians, the advice holds. Music is the most common part of the wedding ceremony to go wrong in my experience, and when it does, everyone cringes. Here are just a few of the experiences I’ve seen during ceremonies:

– In one ceremony, the couple had a friend who was a talented violinist, and they asked him to play for their ceremony. He arrived very close to the ceremony start time, and set up his equipment. Yes, the violinist had electronic tracks recorded that accompanied his live performance. All this could have been wonderful if he had an experienced assistant who managed the electronics while he focused on his violin. Instead, there were long, awkward pauses waiting for him to begin the accompaniment and then a rush while he tried to position his violin and join in. The long pause before the recessional began left the couple standing in front of their guests, ready to leave the ceremony space, but without any music.

– In other cases music strikes a sour note when friends or family are asked to provide the ceremony music from an iPod/iPad or similar device. I’ve seen these devices trying to play music loud enough to be heard beyond the front 2 rows. They forgot to bring speakers. I’ve seen these devices lock between the beginning and end of the ceremony with the person not knowing the password to unlock it. I’ve seen devices that were tested and connected to bluetooth speakers 30 minutes before the ceremony, only to have them time out and refuse to reconnect for the actual ceremony.

– And maybe the worst was the teenager asked to run the ceremony music from a device in the minutes before the ceremony. She didn’t know which songs were for which parts of the ceremony, and we heard snippets of each of them as the wedding party entered and she tried to figure it all out. When the recessional song (“Signed, Sealed,Delivered”) played as the bride entered, I knew it was going to be a memorable ceremony, and not in a good way.

You can prevent the situation where music strikes a sour note during your ceremony by hiring knowledgeable, experienced people. If you have hired a DJ for your reception it is usually a relatively small incremental expense to have them cover your ceremony, too. If you are hiring live musicians, make sure they’ve played for weddings before, and see if one of them can attend your rehearsal to be clear on where your musical selections fit in the ceremony. If you decide to take a chance and have a family member or friend handle your recorded music, make sure you’ve gotten the needed equipment and that they attend rehearsal and actually play the music as you want them to for the ceremony. Music can be a wonderful addition to your ceremony. Make sure you plan appropriately so you avoid the situation where your music strikes a sour note on your wedding day.

Change Happens

 in Ceremony / Weddings  tagged ceremony / wedding ceremony / wedding changes / weddings by

Change happens, in life and in wedding planning. There are so many moving parts when planning a wedding day that something is bound to change. That’s normal and OK… if you actively manage the change when it happens.

I’ve seen two different couples handle change very differently, one successfully, and one not so successfully. In the first case, the couple moved the time for their ceremony out 90 minutes, and didn’t let me know. The Ceremony Agreement we had all signed stated one start time, and their invitations went out with a time listed that was 90 minutes later. By the time I found out about the change – from the venue manager, because the couple never contacted me about needing to change the time – I had booked an event with another couple in a nearby town for later that day and could not perform the wedding at the later time.

The second couple shows how a similar situation should be handled when change happens. In this case, shortly after booking my services with a stated ceremony start time in the Ceremony Agreement, the bride decided the day would flow better if the ceremony started 30 minutes later than first planned. She contacted me to ask if I could accommodate the change, and I assured her I could. She asked me not to change anything yet, as she wanted to ensure that the new time would work with her other vendors – photographer, musicians, florist, and of course, the venue. Once everyone confirmed their ability to handle the change, she confirmed the new ceremony start time with all of us. We’re all working to the new time, and because the change was made early enough in the planning process and communicated well with all impacted vendors, I expect that all will be well come her September wedding day.

Weddings are complex events with many moving parts and involving many people, so it’s not surprising when change happens. It also doesn’t have to be problematic when change happens if you take the time to consider who all will be impacted by the change and communicate with them as early as possible. Staying relaxed and thoughtful when dealing with changes will help ensure that your wedding day comes together the way you envision it.

Why Opt for a Custom Wedding Ceremony?

 in Ceremony / Personalization / Weddings  tagged custom ceremony / custom wedding / custom wedding ceremony / wedding ceremony by

Why opt for a custom wedding ceremony when a pre-written ceremony is easier and cheaper? Because your wedding day celebrates the two of you and the love you’ve found together. That love is unique to the two of you, and deserves more than a “fill in the names” ceremony. You’ve invested long months making many decisions about napkin colors, centerpieces and name cards. Doesn’t your ceremony deserve some focus and investment, too?

There is no question that if you opt for a custom wedding ceremony you will need to invest some time and attention. You’ll need to provide information on yourself and on you as a couple to allow your celebrant to create a ceremony that authentically reflects you. You’ll need to review a draft or two to ensure that they have the facts right and have captured the tone you want for your ceremony. But many couples have shared that the time they invest working on their ceremony has been time well spent. When they’re busy and stressed by the myriad decisions and tasks associated with planning a wedding day, taking an hour or two to think about their love, their past experiences together and the future that is in front of them can be an opportunity to focus again on the big picture. To focus on what’s really important about the day and why it is even happening.

When you opt for a custom wedding ceremony it puts you in the drivers seat. You select your own music (without limitations imposed by religion or officiant). You select your own reading(s), can decide not to have any at all, or can request assistance in identifying a reading that reflects some aspect of your story. The choice of unity ritual and the choice to include one are also yours, with customization to make it relevant to you a great option. With your vows the centerpiece of your wedding ceremony it only makes sense that you have the option to write your own, or to select ones that speak to the promises you want to make to each other in marriage. When you opt for a custom wedding ceremony you choose which ceremony elements to include and control how they come together.

Opt for a custom wedding ceremony to ensure it reflects you as a couple.

More skill, resources, knowledge and time are required from your celebrant when you opt for a custom wedding ceremony and it will accordingly be a bit more costly. When viewed as a percentage of your wedding budget your ceremony is still one of the smallest expenditures you will make, though, and is really what your wedding day is all about… the two of you professing your love and commitment to each other in front of your family and friends. All the rest is just a great party, so give your ceremony the time and attention needed to make it the perfect beginning to your marriage adventure.