Gay Wedding Traditions?

Hey Zac! First, congratulations!! One tradition I've seen (sometimes at wedding receptions, but most often at showers or rehearsal dinners) is the shoe game where the couple sits back-to-back in chairs and answers questions like "Who is the messier of the two?" or "Who said 'I love you' first?" and both people hold up the corresponding shoe as their answer. The only thing would be to make sure you wear different colors or styles of shoes from your fiance. I also love personal touches at wedding reception tables...for instance, you could have numbers for the tables but also names for them (whether it be different cities you've traveled to, different milestones in y'all's relationship, or even different groups of people like "Zac's coworkers/[Insert company name here] Crew" and "Fiance's coworkers" or something)....then you could add photos of you both in that city / at that milestone / with those people. Just throwing out some ideas that came to mind I wish y'all the best in your planning!!

Hey Zac!

My fiancee and I absolutely cringed watching our parents wedding videos and seeing them do things like the "garter toss." We knew that we had to kind of shop around when it came to "traditions," because the outdated 80's semi-sexual stuff was not going to cut it for us, haha. I mean, we're so shy that we're not even having a first dance or a head table. We'd much rather let the guests enjoy an array of activities and to be able to go from group to group. Hopefully we'll have chosen a few that will eventually become traditions within our own family down the line! One thing that was important to us is that we didn't want to appropriate any kind of culturally/religiously significant traditions (we've been to so many weddings, haha...)

Anyway! We found something called "Bury the Bourbon," and although we'd never heard of it (we live in South Texas), apparently it's Southern. Since it isn't a tradition in our family, and we're already kind of bastardizing it anyway, we won't actually be using Bourbon... However, the gist is that you take some time (two days; a week; or a month before the wedding) to bury a sealed bottle of liquor at the ceremony and/or reception site. Then, you chose to either dig it up after the ceremony or during the reception and share it with everyone who is there. The idea is that if the bottle is still sealed by the time you open it later on, it's good luck; and the more it's shared, the better luck you have as well. We'll be toasting "Slainte," for good health! We're getting married at the family home but this might work well for a Beach wedding, too! FH is Irish, and he would like us to do a celtic "tying of the knot" during the ceremony as well. A lot of people do the sand, or the knot or the candles, which are all basic variations of the same thing, I suppose.

We are also having a first look and exchanging our written vows to each other in private. We're also making an offering to Buddha, but that isn't really something for others to watch; just something for ourselves.

Thank you for your post! I'm excited to see what others suggest as well! Happy planning!

Aubrianna Abbema

Congrats on your engagement. My wife and I stuck to a fairly traditional wedding. We skipped some things, like bouquet toss and garter toss. We each had mix gender wedding parties. We did a glow stick grand exit. And we definitely had a party at our reception!

Congratulations! I just wanted to echo something you said. I feel so thankful that my partner and I don't feel pressure to follow every wedding tradition. Being queer gives us the freedom to make the day into whatever we want! We are early in the ceremony planning phase, but there's a few things we scratched right away--garter and bouquet toss, wedding party fuss, all of the pre-parties. We rented out a campground for the weekend and plan on swimming in the river, having bonfires, and just enjoying waking up with all of our favorite people. If you're not familiar with the website Offbeat Bride, it really does a great job of highlighting "outside of the box" traditions and rituals that people create for themselves. I recommend checking it out to see how creative people get.

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Thank you Allie! all these are great. I want this wedding to be fun and memorable - nothing I hate more than a boring wedding haha. I truly appreciate your reply

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Hi Aubrianna -

I love it all haha! so creative...I love that y'all completely turned a traditional act into something unique and memorable.

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Awesome! thank you for the suggestion. Good luck in your planning as well!

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Dear Zachary,

Rebecca was right! There's so much more freedom today and there really are no rules! We both come from very non-religious, non-traditional and honestly non-cultural families so we didn't have too much to work with and wanted to find things that made "sense" to us; if that makes sense, haha. Maybe creativity will come along and we can come up with something entirely new on its own! Can't wait to see what holds significance for you and your FH!

Aubrianna Abbema

Congratulations!! My wife to be and I are doing a few things different from traditions we've seen in our family's weddings. So my mom is walking me down the isle, not sure what my fiance is doing there, yet. I'm not sure I want to have bouquets and she just doesn't care if we do or do not have them. I found a different type of bouquet, which is a hoop with flowers on it. Which I sort of like. I'm not sure though. We're doing the shoe game and we're having a BBQ style reception. We still haven't decided on the rest yet. Hopefully we find something different that we like.