Photo by Blue Rose Photography
If you haven’t read Chapters One through Five, I recommend starting with those posts first.
In those previous chapters, I have talked about what I used for wedding planning and I honestly believe that I was successful at planning our wedding because I had The Joyful Wedding Planner to help guide me! I am using that as the framework for these posts, but I HIGHLY encourage you to buy the real thing for yourself. It’s only a $25 purchase for the full range of PDFs! The document is comprised of 160 pages of wedding planning goodness, so this low price is SUCH a steal! And the benefit of it being digital means that you can reprint any planner pages that you may want to replace or have multiples of.
This chapter is all about the Main Event: officially getting married!
While a wedding ceremony may seem like a pretty straightforward affair, there are definitely logistical things that you will want to consider which are covered in this chapter. You will also find that there are many ways to make the occasion especially memorable by personalizing the decor, ceremony and your vows!
Photo by Blue Rose Photography
CEREMONY BASICS
To help you determine the details of your ceremony, ask yourselves questions such as:
Who do we want to officiate our ceremony?
Do we want to have readings and if yes, how many and by whom?
Will guests be seated traditionally or will it be open seating?
If our ceremony and reception are at different venues, how will we guide our guests from place to place?
…
As an example, for our wedding we hired a professional officiant, opted not to have any readings during our ceremony, allowed guests to sit wherever they wanted, and had our ceremony at the same location as the reception so no guest transportation was required.
There are so many more questions to ask yourselves (beyond just the sampling above) that are included in the digital planner to help you make all of the necessary ceremony decisions!
Photo by Blue Rose Photography
OFFICIANT
My husband and I are not religious people so we do not belong to a church / temple that has a priest, minister, rabbi, etc. that we would have asked to perform our wedding ceremony. Originally, we considered asking a close friend to officiate for us and ultimately decided not to go that route as we wanted everyone attending our wedding to be able to just relax and have a good time, but we loved the idea of having a loved one officiate! It would definitely add another facet of personalization to your ceremony and who would know you better as a couple and be able to really personalize your ceremony than someone who is super close to you?!
Our wish was to find someone who would lead us through our wedding ceremony by conveying how seriously we take the institution of marriage and the commitment we were making to one another (without a religious aspect) while also making the experience very “us” and lighthearted. We met with a handful of candidates, but the professional officiant we ended up hiring was perfectly suited for our wedding. We loved that she offered a curated approach to our vows by asking us to complete a questionnaire together that she then used to create the most perfect ceremony for us (which caused me to cry happy tears throughout our entire wedding 😂). This approach to our ceremony and vows was especially nice because everything was personalized, but neither of us was agonizing over having to write the “perfect” words and both of our vows were the same length (it always feels out-of-balance when one person writes something really long and the other writes something short and sweet).
The last thing I have to say on this topic is that your wedding should be a reflection of you and your partner as a couple; after all, it is one of the most important days of your life! One officiant that we interviewed spent our entire meeting only talking about himself and it felt like he would probably make our ceremony all about him. Just be sure that whoever you ask to officiate your wedding will be highlighting both you and your fiancée and not themselves.
LOGISTICS
Speaking from experience, you will definitely want to provide an outline and / or timeline of the ceremony to your day-of coordinator as well as to your officiant ahead of time, like at least a week in advance. Those vendors will likely ask for it to be submitted to them by a certain date so that they can be familiar with the timeline for the day-of, but a week is a fairly reasonable amount of time if the vendors haven’t requested it. Providing these guides will help to ensure that everything runs smoothly and stays on time! The coordinator can be sure that all guests are seated by the time the Processional starts, will know what order everyone should be walking down the aisle, and the officiant will know whom to call up for their readings and in what order, etc.
In addition to the two outline pages shown above, the Planner also includes details on the Basic Ceremony Structure, suggestions on common rituals and traditions you may be interested to include in your ceremony, an in-depth look at the order of the typical Processional, a space to place any visual inspiration for the decor of the ceremony, and tons of advice regarding your vows.
Photo by Blue Rose Photography
DECOR
Last, but certainly not least, is the ceremony decor! You can find a ton of inspiration in my Pinterest board here! Be sure to discuss what you are dreaming of with your florist during your site visit / walkthrough and show them any photos you may have to help them understand your vision. Additionally, be open to your florist’s suggestions! As an example, our venue was not conducive to having an arch to be married under, but we were able to frame the “altar” space in a different way (seen above) and we loved it!
This stunning ceremony space was designed and executed by Sinclair & Moore; this image was shared on Steve’s Instagram Stories and I loved it as an example for aisle decor!
I absolutely adore when an aisle is lined with decor items such as candles, lanterns, greenery, ribbons, or even floral arrangements! There are so many creative ways to personalize and frame a ceremony space, both indoors and outdoors! I love to see the gorgeous scenes that couples come up with to make their day special.
I hope that this guidance helps you to create the “framework” for your wedding ceremony! I recommend using the opportunity to personalize the event and it’s details so that the day reflects you and your fiancée as a couple moving into this new chapter of your lives!
Sending hugs —
xx, Natalie
P.S. In the spirit of full disclosure, I know these posts may seem like I am partnering with The Joyful Wedding Planner / Cultivate What Matters group, but this planner is seriously a head above the rest and was indispensable to me for planning our wedding! I believe in it SO strongly and just want to share it with you!
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