wedding guests

Honored Guests: Helpful Ceremony Preparation Tips

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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.

Including Guests in Your Wedding Ceremony

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Including guests in your wedding ceremony makes it more personal, unique and interesting. Individual guests can be invited to participate based on their relationship to you or based on a talent they have. And all guests can be invited to participate to demonstrate their support for you and your marriage.

A friend or relative that you are close to can be invited to offer a reading. You’ll want to make sure that they are comfortable with public speaking and can read clearly and slowly. I’ve seen mutual friends of the couple, a close aunt or uncle, grandparents, personal attendants, or even parents of the couple asked to do the reading.

If you have musically talented friends or relatives, you can invite them to offer a musical selection before the ceremony begins, to back the processional, recessional or unity ritual, or as a standalone solo during the ceremony. If you opt for the standalone solo option, it’s nice to have the person stand where they can be seen so guests can watch them perform.

If your state requires witnesses to sign your wedding certificate, this is yet another special role that can be offered to guests. While most often couples invite the best man and maid of honor to sign the certificate, I’ve also had couples invite their mothers, fathers, and even grandparents to take this important role.

Ring Warming

A ring warming ritual is a newer option for including guests in your wedding ceremony. The rings you will exchange are placed in a small bowl, basket or bag, or tied together with ribbon and passed among all the guests. This ritual is performed early in the ceremony so the rings are back in front by the time you finish your vows and are ready to exchange the rings. Guests are invited to imbue the rings with their love and best wishes for you and your marriage, and as you exchange them the rings are spoken of as now carrying those wishes as you cross the threshold into marriage.

Another option for guest involvement begins when everyone is given a small stone or pebble as they are being seated. Then, near the end of the ceremony they are invited to hold their pebbles, respond verbally to a request to support you in your marriage, and then imbue the pebble with their good wishes for you. If your guest list is very small (30 or fewer), you can invite the guests to come forward one at a time, place their pebble in a bowl or basket, and then share their wishes with you verbally. For larger groups, you can place the basket or bowl next to you in the receiving line and invite guests to drop their pebbles there and share their wishes as you greet them after the ceremony.

Thumbprint Ritual

And a final option is for you to place overlapping thumbprints on a tree or other drawing on a poster board during your ceremony representing the joining of your lives in marriage. Then have your honor attendants place their thumbprints on the tree in support of your marriage and invite guests to do the same during the reception. The poster board can also include places for your guests to add their signatures so it serves as a guestbook/recording of your guests, too.

Including guests in your wedding is another way to personalize your ceremony and make it more memorable for everyone. Consider the personalities, talents and interests of your family and friends to decide how you might invite them to participate in your special day.

Extending Your Wedding Ceremony Experience

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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!