Wedding Ceremony Ideas & Tips for Wedding Ceremony Planning

First, consider four things:

• Where do you want your ceremony to take place?
• How lengthy a ceremony do you want?
• How religious will your ceremony be?
• How many traditions will you include or omit?

Wedding ceremony planning starts with choosing a venue.

If you do not already know where you will have your ceremony, consider the season first.

Next, consider how many guests you will invite, how formal your wedding will be, and where your reception will be held.

If the weather is nice, have the ceremony outdoors in a garden, a park, a gazebo, a grove of trees, by a lake or on the beach.

For cooler seasons, hold the wedding ceremony in a home, a historic building, a church or an appropriate space at your reception site.

No matter how much you think you want a quick “in and out” ceremony, you may regret a ceremony any shorter than 20 minutes. Your wedding day will go by fast; you don’t want to cry later that the simple ceremony you wanted went by so fast that it didn’t seem real.

Keep your ceremony between 20 minutes and an hour. Once you decide on the time, choose wedding ceremony ideas that are meaningful to you, and that fulfill your desired ceremony length.

Church wedding? If so, find out if you’re required to attend counseling, if there are limitations on how the wedding party can dress, and if the readings and music must all be religious.

The church you intend to be married in will add to or limit the wedding ceremony ideas you can incorporate, so speak to your officiant before going any further with your wedding ceremony planning.

He or she can suggest to you a basic ceremony outline, biblical wedding readings and and whether there’s any flexibility in the format.

If you and your fiancé are of different faiths but would like to combine traditions from each faith in your ceremony, then you’ll need an interfaith officiant who is willing to perform your ceremony and has some experience.

Once you have found an appropriate officiant, talk with him or her about the wedding ceremony ideas and traditions from each of your faiths you would like to include in your wedding.

Together, you will come up with a format you will all be comfortable with.

Not getting married in a church, but would like to have some references to God in a non-denominational setting?

Find an officiant who is willing to marry you and is familiar with non-denominational ceremonies.

Before meeting with your officiant to work out your ceremony outline, you and your fiancé should decide how you want to mention God in your ceremony.

A prayer? A song? A reading? During the welcoming? During the vows?

If you want no mention of God in your ceremony, a secular humanist minister is a good choice for you. Religion is not the only way to infuse meaning into your ceremony.

You can always raise the subjects of love, human compassion, and gratitude in several parts of your ceremony (vows, unique wedding readings).

If you and your fiancé want to celebrate specific spiritual beliefs in your ceremony, choose an officiant carefully. Some secular officiants will not do this because they will consider this including some aspect of the supernatural in the ceremony.

Secular celebrations still follow the tradition of the bride standing to the left and the groom to the right.

Will you be wearing a veil but not covering your face? Lighting a unity candle? Promising to “honor and obey?”

Think about the ceremony traditions you would like to keep, write them down in your notebook and talk frankly with your officiant about what you’re comfortable with.

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