Human beings have always loved rituals to mark a societal status shift in their lives, and what bigger turning point is there then your marriage? Think about it: birthdays, proposals, bridal showers, baby showers and retirement parties, the list is endless of little rituals we do to show our peers our status has changed.
While the rituals stay in place and seem imperative, it’s often difficult to explain what they mean. For example, it’s not unusual to wear pointed hats, eat birthday cake, and sing the “Happy Birthday” song, but why? What do pointy hats have to do with getting older or iced cake for that matter? Often we get more involved in the ritual itself than the meaning it originally held, which can feel like it undermines the importance of the event.
Those who want to craft an unconventional wedding their guests will remember may want to switch out some of the common traditional rituals for ones that mean more to the couple. If you’re looking to replace some of the more dry rituals in your marriage ceremony here are ten unique wedding ceremony ideas.
1. Release sky lanterns
The most obvious ritual in weddings is the Unity Ritual, which oftentimes is the lighting of a candle as one unit in Christian ceremonies. An alternative idea to this is lighting a sky lantern. The symbolic flame of unification is still present, but with a more interesting and modern twist. This can be really powerful in an outdoor wedding and a great way to involve the whole congregation in creating the feel of unity for your new marriage.
After you and your new husband light a colored lantern of your choosing together, and allow it to rise into the air, you can involve the congregation by having them light lanterns of a different color to join yours.
Not only is this a great way to incorporate the wedding colors into the ceremony, but also a symbol of community. Your joint family and friends can release lanterns to join yours in the sky as a symbol of their faith in your love and solidarity for each other.
Another possible addition to this idea is for the congregation to write a message of well-wishing for the new couple on the side of their lanterns, so that a flock of kind words follow the couple’s solitary lantern into the sky.
2. Egg messages
This is for the crafty couple that wants to have a thoughtful gift for each other in the future. Have both newly weds make an egg message for the other. To make this, an egg is poked on both ends with a needle, and the egg/yolk is cleaned out without damaging the shell of the egg.
Then, after the egg is completely cleaned out, a message is rolled up and inserted through the hole in the shell. The egg’s shell is then painted however they desire. The couple would each make one of these eggs and exchange them at the ceremony.
They could promise to crack open the egg and read the message on whatever time they both deemed special. Some options would be their first fight, after ten years of marriage, or after the birth of their first child. Until then, the eggs could be a beautiful mantle decoration as a reminder of the couple’s love for each other and the anticipation of the secret note inside.
3. Make an hourglass together
This is another cheap to make metaphorical ritual for the wedding ceremony. Buy a large hourglass and unscrewing the top, pour out the white sand. Using the colors of your wedding, each of you will pour a portion of colored sand into the hourglass mixing the two colors together in front of the congregation.
The symbolism here being that the two colors (or two people) cannot be separated from the other, and that the time between two people inevitably runs out. This ritual would be a symbol of compromise and appreciating the time spent together.
After the special day, the hourglass can rest on the bedside of the couple to remind them that their marriage can always be turned around and time rewound to start over with each other’s love.
4. Fingerprint wedding bands
If flashy jewelry isn’t your style or you’d rather spend your money on an expensive honeymoon than a ring, there’s still a way to make the placing of rings meaningful. For as little as 170$ you can get silver or gold rings with the fingerprint of your beloved on the inside or outside of the wedding band from various sellers on Etsy.
This is a great option for anyone who wants a poetic meaning to the wedding bands beyond just a gemstone. The symbolism of leaving an imprint on everything you touch is seen tangibly here as the fingerprint of your spouse literally encircles your finger in a symbol of unity.
5. Lock and key
This is a great cost-effective ritual that still has a lasting impact in a wedding. Find two antique locks and key styles that symbolize each other’s personality, they can be ornate or simple, depending on what each person wants.
During the ceremony you can take multiple routes with this idea, like locking the locks together and throwing the keys into a body of water, if you were having a beach wedding or an outdoor ceremony. If you aren’t nearby a body of water or somewhere you can lose the keys, you can lock the locks symbolically for the wedding, but keep the keys, unlocking the locks after to place them around your first house together.
You could place the locks around a fencepost in your yard or above your door and bury the two keys together. Another possible option is, after the ceremony, placing the two locks linked where you two first met.
No matter how you choose to display your love locks, the idea that you are forever locked together as a married couple is secure. There’s a sense of secret pleasure in knowing you can display the locks proudly around your home or in public without many people glancing twice at them. They are a simple and elegant expression of your love for each other that will stand the test of time.
6. Map-guided spontaneity
This next idea is for the lovebirds that hope to travel. Have a giant map of the world and colored pushpins for guests to put in the board. Have your guests put the pins on the areas of the world they think you two would most enjoy, or places they wish they could see.
Don’t have your honeymoon pre-planned and after the wedding is over visit whatever area has the most pins, or pick from the variety of random places in the world your guests have marked.
Frame your map as an art piece for your house, and make a pact to start a little fund for travelling and when the savings has reached enough money to make a trip, visit a new place indicated on your map. This will remind you throughout the years of the promises made at your wedding as you get to see the different places on your map in person.
Be sure to post on Facebook to show your wedding guests from long ago that you’re still visiting the places they picked, and that your love is as strong as ever.
7. Not your average rice-throwing
If the throwing of rice seems a bit cliché for you, there are two great alternatives to this age-old tradition. Assuming rice throwing would be outside anyway, a great symbolic and earth conscious thing to throw is seeds.
Whether you choose to throw simple grass seeds to help with landscaping or lavender seeds to hopefully create a lush, natural meadow at the spot where your love was unified; the metaphor of seeds is a powerful one. A blatant symbol of new life and new beginnings, seeds are a beautiful way to supplement the magic of marriage.
If you’re less concerned with plants after the ceremony ends and more worried about pictures, you can throw rainbow sprinkles. The rainbow of colors makes for a joyful scene in pictures and the sprinkles are biodegradable, as rain will melt them.
If you want your wedding to have a fun and playful vibe, sprinkles are a great way to create that atmosphere, and any children present will go crazy for the rainbow showers of sugar.
8. The magnificent donut-cake
Tiered wedding cakes can be ridiculously expensive, and finding a flavor all the guests will enjoy can be a huge headache. Though a weird concept at first, donut cake towers can be elegant, easily accessible to guests, and a solution to the issue of different flavor preferences.
A way to tie in a more uniform approach is to have the icing or sprinkles on the donuts all in the same colors of your wedding, regardless of cake flavorings. This will ultimately be a much cheaper option because the per-slice ratio of wedding cake shops is far higher than the per-donut ratio, even if the pastries are custom made.
This is a great option for weddings with lots of children as well, because ease of serving is hugely increased.
9. Artist’s bouquet
This is a great gift idea for the bride who loves books and poetry, or the couple who is found more often in a coffee shop then at a bar. Instead of having an expensive bouquet of flowers that will wilt and die within a week, craft delicate paper flowers from his and her favorite poems and books to create a literary bouquet.
Not only will they cherish this gift forever as an extremely thoughtful gesture, but they can always take the paper flowers from the bouquet and put them in a shadowbox frame as a reminder of their shared taste in the arts to hang in their house together.
If they decide to still go with the throwing of the bouquet, they will not only be passing on the good luck of catching the “flowers”, but spreading their literary taste as well.
This idea can work similarly with music sheets for musicians or acrylic painted flowers for painters etc.
10. Have a drink on us
Come up with your own recipe for a cocktail drink or few, and name it after the bride and groom. Then when toasts go around everyone can toast, drinking to the new couple’s health and happiness while drinking the themed cocktail.
This can also be done by having a bar and changing the names of all the drinks to funny or nostalgic names of the couple’s choosing causing guests to have to guess when ordering drinks and try new concoctions.
Weddings as a process can be stressful and incredibly costly, but there are ways to make yours both memorable and cost efficient. By taking a more non-traditional approach, it’s easier to save money and create an atmosphere that has a more homemade, rustic or artistic feel.
Don’t let your wedding be bogged down by the monotony of unoriginal receptions and services. Have that unique, artsy wedding you’ve had on your Pinterest board for years and create memories all your friends will be talking about and copying in their own services.
Comment and let us know about some of the best nontraditional weddings you’ve seen and if this list made you take note for your own wedding, give it a share. Weddings don’t happen every day; it’s up to us to make them as memorable as they can be without breaking the bank.
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