How to Customize Your Wedding

By Jeff Lakie

Traditional weddings are not a thing of the past. We live in a world that is quickly advancing, and yet we love the rich traditions of the wedding: the white dress, the flowers, the tuxedos, the vows and rings and music.

But if you’re unique, you may not want a completely traditional wedding, and yet you may not want a wedding that is so totally unusual, people won’t be sure if they’ve been to a wedding. Here are some ideas to combine your traditional wedding with your unique tastes.

· Choose your music according to your tastes, not how it’s been done for years. If there are a lot of traditionalists in the audience, you may want to only have one song that is uniquely your song, while the rest are traditional songs. For example, the recessional at the very end is a great place to play “your song.”

· Instead of flowers, which are costly and short-lived, consider candles which can be equally beautiful but are cheaper. Plus, there will still be some life left in them after the wedding for your personal use.

· Incorporate important aspects of who you are into the ceremony and reception. If you are both into horses, why not ride off together into the sunset on horseback? If you are both into scuba-diving, why not have your ceremony at a beautiful resort overlooking the ocean?

· The bride’s bouquet does not have to be entirely made of flowers. It can also contain candles, gems, seashells, a teddy bear, or even a tasteful urn of the ashes of a departed loved one who should be honored on this special day.

· A wedding cake is an expensive and very traditional piece of decoration. Perhaps there is some other appropriate item that can be used instead of a cake but with much more meaning. After all, who will miss it when it’s gone? You will have so many pictures of your wedding it will be hard to remember “oh, where’s the cake picture” even if you have one!

· The wedding dress… is probably something you don’t want to touch yet. Many traditions are valuable and the wedding dress is one of the primary symbols at a wedding that may not be welcomed so readily. If you’re really daring, though, go for it! Or mix things up by incorporating color other than white into your wedding gown.

Enlist friends and relatives to come up with good ideas that are fun, creative, and uniquely you — but be sure to always try to combine your ideas tastefully with age-old traditions. Do this and you’re sure to truly enjoy a memorable wedding that honors the old way of doing things but speaks volumes about your own personality.

Jeff Lakie is the founder of Wedding Information, a website providing information on Weddings