While wedding ceremony traditions have dictated how weddings should be conducted through the ages, times are changing. Couples no longer want to go with stereotyped weddings and prefer the non-traditional to the traditional. There are many areas in which the non-traditional and the unusual can feature in a wedding ceremony from the cake to the reception location and everything in between.
In today‟s world most couples plan and pay for their wedding out of their own pockets, so expensive weddings are too much of a strain for the couple. Some non-traditional ideas for a wedding ceremony include:
A destination wedding that can be combined with the honeymoon and has the advantage of limiting the guests to near family members only. A small ceremony will suffice as not all the invited guests will fly to Honolulu or Thailand to watch you get married.
A beach wedding is a great money saver. It can be low key with a picnic reception and swimming thrown in to add to the excitement. You will have a day filled with memories and lots of beautiful pictures.
The traditional tiered wedding cake is also an expensive deal so you can compromise by having only one tier of actual cake and the rest made from Styrofoam. Most couples are choosing to go this route to save their money. You get the traditional cake cutting bit and make a saving as well. There are couples who go to absolute extremes by not having the traditional cake at all. The tiered cake is replaced by cupcakes or fruit muffins or even pie, it really is the couple‟s choice and if they want to be different, so be it.
Whatever is meaningful to the couple and reflective of their personalities and values should do just as well as traditional practices. Create your own traditions at your wedding – it is your day. You will never be able to please everyone so don‟t even try. You can get as creative as you
want when planning your wedding bearing in mind that it is not the cake or the gown or even the reception that is important. You are at the start of something new and beautiful and you should not lose sight of it all through the planning. Weddings last a few hours and are then all over, but the marriage has to last a lifetime.
One important thing to remember when planning your wedding – it‟s your day and what you want wins out over what guests want or think!
