Wedding Traditions

We did a first look, walked each other down the aisle, skipped the parent dances, skipped both tosses, I had two dresses, we wrote our own vows for the ceremony, and I'm sure I'm forgetting a few other things. We skipped a lot of traditions.

Here's what we added to make our wedding more "us": we did a shot with all of our guests during the ceremony (though per venue rules, it had to be non-alcoholic). My husband and I have a tradition of doing a tequila shot whenever we go on a new adventure (visit a new city, attend a concert for a band we've never seen live before, etc), so we figured that doing a shot during the ceremony would be fitting, as neither of us had been married before. We did a reverse anniversary dance, where instead of people leaving the dance floor, people are added (starts with just me and my husband dancing, then anyone married 1 year or less joins us, then 5 years or less join in, then 10 years or less, etc). This way, by the end, the dance floor is full and we can transition into open dancing. Instead of serving cake, we served tiramisu for dessert (though we had a small cake just for cake cutting).

I love the idea of gifting veils to upcoming brides!

View Quoted Comment See that’s what I’m talking about! I’m here fo all of the things you did! Love how you diversified the dance and included other couples. We did a newlywed game and toilet paper wedding dress contest. We also did a shout out for newly couples, engaged and oldest married couples. My favorite part was the west African tradition bridal entrance post ceremony where I had to basically walk and dance at the same time looking for my groom. Also I didn’t have a bridal party but I named the eldest women in my family as flower “women”. They were the hit of the ceremony! We really wanted to make the wedding and reception about our guest and less about us. We wanted an atmosphere of inclusivity so we planned with the guest experience in mind. I love your ideas!

What a fun topic! I absolutely love non-traditional weddings that couples decide to make their own!
It was really important for us to have a wedding that reflected us, rather than one that stuck to arbitrary traditions of years passed. We will be the first in our families to have a small, kid-free destination wedding (all the other weddings have been large events that felt more like a Family reunion then a romantic celebration). I will be wearing two dresses, and neither of them will be white (or any other common variation, like ivory, blush, etc.). Our wedding parties will be choosing their own attire, which we will not be seeing or approving before hand. It was really important for us that our friends felt comfortable, confident and attractive in whatever they choose to wear! My bridal party will be mixed gender, and will include my ex-boyfriend. We will be paying for hair and make up for the ladies, but will not be requiring it and will not be dictated what styles they choose – I told them all no holds barred! We will have a string quartet playing strictly non-traditional music during the prelude and the ceremony. The area is known for their cuisine, and we really wanted all our guests to have the opportunity to be immersed in the local culture/vibe, so we will be hosting a welcome dinner at a well-known restaurant that embodies the vibe of the area. And rather than serving traditional wedding food, we have hired a local chef to prepare local cuisine for our reception. We will also be treating all our guests to a boozy walking haunted history tour of the city (with several stops at local taverns to fill up our drinks lol). Our “unity ceremony” will be a unity shot with our guests. We will be skipping speeches, spotlight dances, ringbearer/flower girl, and bouquet/garter tosses. We just want a really cool, laid-back, fun experience for us and our guests!

We skipped a lot of the traditions too.. namely we skipped spending the night apart, not seeing each other the day of, garter toss and first dance & parent dances.

I didn't particularly want to do the bouquet toss but people really wanted it on the day and I wasn't that bothered either way so we just went with it.

We didn't do anything crazy by any means but it was lovely to have my mum walk me down the aisle and do the speech, two of my favourite parts of the day. We also didn't bother worrying about whether my bridesmaids/family stood on my side and his groomsmen/family on his side for the photos - I really like how all the photos turned out with the mixed sides. Our lives and families are entwined now, so it made sense to us to have them all mixed up

I think the most unusual part of the day was our ceremony which was held in a pub garden. We'd told the celebrant we wanted to keep it short and funny and she really delivered - people haven't stopped writing to me about how we're clearly going to have lots of fun together in our married life if our ceremony was anything to go by.

We also brought with us a cactus that my husband gave me on on our second date, it was mentioned in our ceremony by our celebrant whilst she was telling everyone about how we met etc and it went on the table whilst we were signing the certificate so its in all of those photos which is really sweet. We also used a picture one of the guests took of it on the back of our thank you cards ('from cact-i to cact-us!')

Love that you added some west african traditions in! Also a great excuse for multiple dresses

View Quoted Comment That sounds like a truly fun wedding. I also love that you are having a mixed gender bridal party!!!!!

View Quoted Comment Ha! Yea! The three dress changes were fun. Thank you for acknowledging that as most people see it as less than practical. I love how your Mum walked you down the aisle. That is so touching!!!

View Quoted Comment What’s really great about abandoning tradition is the opportunity it gives you just to embrace and enjoy the day and just be. Often Brides get so caught up in checking traditional boxes that it makes it hard to just relax into the moment of Bridal Bliss.

I like this thread! My FW and I are Jewish, so one of the first conversations we had after getting engaged was-- how traditional are we going to be? It's important to us to have a Jewish wedding, but many wedding traditions are gendered-- not in a bad way or inequitable way necessarily, but still a stumbling block for a same-sex couple. We ended up doing away with more than our family is probably comfortable with, but I think we're going to strike a good balance of traditional and authentic.

Interesting to note-- some things that non-Jewish brides think of as nontraditional are just normal for our weddings. Both bride and groom walk down the aisle, each accompanied by both parents. There's no "giving away". I have never seen a bouquet toss and NEVER a garter toss. The dancing/partying is wild.

View Quoted Comment You nailed it! I think brides get so wrapped up in creating the “perfect” wedding with every single tradition they’ve ever seen, that the day just becomes about rushing from one thing to another, checking off those boxes, and not just enjoying the once-in-a-lifetime experience. I think that’s why so many brides express disappointment and the inability to move on after their wedding doesn’t go exactly as they had planned. Hopefully ditching all these extra traditions will make the day much more calm and enjoyable for us!

I had a sheet cake instead of a fancy teired cake!



We didn’t have MOH, best man, or any bridal party members.

I didn’t have a train on my dress.

My husband wore a suit!

These are all little details but they were so us!

View Quoted Comment Love this! 💙🎂💍🎂💙

View Quoted Comment Absolutely! We live in a world where we feel compelled to conform to standards that may not really be for us. As it relates to this topic social media allows us to visualize others bridal experiences and then we can be inspired to put pressure on ourselves to compete with that. When really your engagement moment and the wedding to follow should be uniquely representative of who you are. We took all of that into consideration and wanted a wedding experience that represented who we are: Inclusive and try to proceed with love in all we do . I think we naile

Ayy I hit reply accidentally I meant to end my prior post saying I think we nailed it. 💙💍💙

View Quoted Comment Thabk you for loving this thread. How much do I love the approach of Jewish weddings!!

I do love all the classic wedding traditions, so a lot of our day is going to be fairly "by the book," but the one thing we're making our own is the receiving line. We only get 30 minutes after the ceremony to take portraits in the church, so we aren't doing any kind of receiving line, grand exit, or anything of that sort. Instead, since our reception is a rooftop venue and guests will have to take an elevator up, we're planning to greet guests as they come up, thank them for coming, and then we got an instant camera so we can get our picture with each guest. The instant photo will be used for the guest book, but the camera also saves the pictures to a memory card, and we're planning to get those printed out and send them with our thank you cards. It kind of serves as a favor plus ensures we actually get to say hi to everyone and thank them for coming.

We did some traditional things for our wedding but not all. We didn’t do the traditional bridal song here come the bride or something new/old/borrowed or blue. I didn’t do the veil over the face. We did do the normal bridal party entrance where they walk in together.But we did do the garter toss/bouquet toss/first dance with husband/father and daughter dance/hour of photos after the ceremony. We did us and it was fun to incorporate some traditions and make it us at the same time

View Quoted Comment I love how you incorporated a blend of traditional and non traditional things!

View Quoted Comment Thanks. All in all it is about making your day the that you want your day be. I wanted my wedding to us, special and enjoyable for us as well as for your guests. We had fun and so did our guests. We are still laughing at a lot of the things that happened at our wedding. Make your wedding for the two of you and enjoy it. Have a beautiful and wonderful wedding everyone.

Love this thread! We are going very nontraditional. No bridal party or even an officiant. We are going to the court house that morning for the legal formalities, but that evening we will walk into the reception venue together and give personal vows to each other in front of our guests, then immediately kick off the reception.

No first dance, anniversary dance, garter toss, bouquet toss or anything like that. We will do a cake cutting, and maybe a couple of toasts, but I think that's about it.

Basically, 10 sappy minutes followed by (I hope) a great party.