5 Wedding Traditions to Keep (Volume #3)

Guests like to have an idea of what to expect for the ceremony… “How long is this going to go?” “Should I go to the bathroom before it starts?” You definitely want to include a program, but don’t make the mistake of overly formalizing this.  Keep it simple and fun.  Most people don’t want to read a novel about your bridal party, and you’d rather have them paying attention to your ceremony than staring down at the program.

Fundamentally, wedding ceremonies are about two people making a lifelong commitment to each other.  Too often, in our hurry to speed things up and get creative with planning our wedding, we minimize the most important part.  We heard from one couple “we didn’t even know what our vows would be until we repeated what the pastor said during our ceremony.”  The ceremony planning should start by putting some deep thought into how you will exchange vows and what those commitments will be.  Definitely add it to your list of wedding traditions to keep.

Too often, we tend to stay a little too surface-level with our relationships.  This is perhaps the biggest ceremony of your life, so don’t be afraid to dive a little deeper.

In this electronic world, it can be tempting to forego the paper wedding invitations.  We are all for modernizing by creating a wedding site (e.g. TheKnot), but this shouldn’t replace your paper invitation.  The three main reasons for this are:

1. The paper invitation will serve as a physical reminder of your upcoming wedding. Guests pin it to their calendars or hang them on their refrigerators as a reminder.
2. Your 75-year-old grandma Dorothy may be less likely to navigate to your wedding site for all of the details.
3. The invitation will serve as priceless memorabilia from your wedding.

We mentioned in one of our blogs on “5 Outdated Wedding Traditions to Ditch” that we are in favor of ditching the receiving line.  This is because it makes your guests unnecessarily wait in a long line.  Couples regularly tell us that one of their biggest regrets is that they weren’t able to visit with all of their guests.  Make sure you have a plan for how you will accomplish this.  The table-to-table approach seems to work best.