small cerimony, no attendants

blumoo

hi! i was just brainstorming different cerimony ideas to do with a really small group, only like 25 people. we have no attendants or anything, and we are not religous, but we still want to have a cerimony of some sort. any ideas? thansk a bunch and sorry for the spelling!

jagore08

What kind of ideas are you looking for?  You can still have a regular, non-religious ceremony as you would with 100 guests.

You can hire a JOP to perform the ceremony and have your reception at a restaurant.

blumoo

we did decide to do the restaraunt reception actually, its just that we are having a hard time visualizing a cerimony without attendants. we know we deffinitly dont want any though!

timsflower81

We are having a small ceremony as well - our wedding is at a Bed and Breakfast - the owner is an officiant - she will perform our ceremony in the garden - with just our parents and my FI's daughter.  There will not be any processional or anything - just me walking down the path to my FI and the officiant.  Our "reception" is at a restaurant that has a private dining room area... after our ceremony at the bed and breakfast we will be cutting our cake for pictures then eating it later on.  The ceremony will probably be very simple, we do not want to write our own vows - want a simple "repeat after me" - ring exchange and the "I do's" with the kiss of course

annie912

We are not having attendants, FI's two sons will hold our rings, and one of FI's friends was ordained online to do our ceremony. It will be in our backyard. Short and sweet. We are not walking down the aisle - there will not be one. We will greet guests as they arrive and mill around in the backyard until the ceremony starts - still working on an appropriate cue for that but FI is a little freaked about being the center of attention (silly boy, doesn't he know that's the bride? kidding!) so we're trying to keep everything as simple as possible.

ginadog

I am having a small ceremony as well, no attendants.  Our judge/officiant person wrote up a lovely 25 minute ceremony for us that is us.  Attendants don't really do anything but take up time walking down the aisle!  You can also google "ceremony scripts" and get some ideas.  Here's the general outline of ours.  Our officiant wrote it all and we just modified.

officiant can greet everyone with the start of the ceremony and thank them for coming, talk about why we selected our location, etc.

officiant talks about marraige, why it brings people together in joy

recite some versus from a poem or story about marriage/love (apache wedding prayer works here), naturey and secular (nonreligious)

officiant says a few things about the couple and how important the day is to them

a friend can do a love peom reading

officiant can have you do the "repeat after me" vows for each of you

you can add your own vows after that if wanted

officiant pronounces you man and wife

kiss and proceed out!

Of course elaborate on all of that and you can get 10-30 mintues.