Non-religious ceremony ideas

Re: Non-religious ceremony ideas

• Jen4948 member

  

  January 2021

  I'm afraid you're not going to be happy with my post, but: In order for your ceremony to be legal, your jurisdiction may require you to include a "declaration of intent" or other serious content. So you're going to have to check with your legal jurisdiction and include at least that in your ceremony.
  
  I can understand not wanting a religious ceremony, but I do think you should avoid trying too hard to be "light-hearted." Some things I think you should avoid are "insider humor" that is intelligible only to yourself and your fiance or a few other people, excessive humor (your ceremony should not be a stand-up comedy routine) and really crass humor.
  
  You might try for a lightly romantic tone, with music, poems or readings about love and life together that aren't ultra-serious but aren't jokefests either.

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• ILoveBeachMusic member

  

  January 2021

  I agree with @Jen4948. You need to make sure you fulfill your state's legal requirements. Marriage is a serious commitment. While you can certainly have non-religious readings and music it shouldn't be a comedy show. I have attended on wedding where there were a lot of jokes and inside humor - I didn't like it. I felt like the couple weren't taking marriage seriously. 

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• Casadena member

  

  January 2021

  I was the MOH in a wedding where they did a "unity cocktail".  Everyone thought it was very cheesy and dumb and it didn't really go over as "funny and light hearted". 
  
  You're wedding doesn't have to be somber by any means, but getting married is a serious thing.  IMO trying too hard to make a ceremony feel "funny" and "not serious" just seems immature.  Smile a lot, say nice things to each other, and be done.  Then have a blast at the reception.  

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• short+sassy member

  

  January 2021

  My husband and I had a fairly casual-feel wedding.  I think one of the best ways to have a ceremony more on the lighter side is to keep it short.  That was what we did, including not having any readings (though readings are nice too).  But, although the ceremony was less than 10 minutes, it was meaningful and full of happy tears.  Obviously I'm biased, lol.  But I feel like my H and I set the right balance and some of that started with the more "light hearted" attitude we went in with and kept.
  
  We had the ceremony and reception at the same place.  We didn't do a first look, but went to a park across the street for pictures.  We had the shots we wanted planned ahead of time for the photographer.  Pics only took about 30 minutes, so we kept that as short as we could also.  Cocktails and finger foods were ready immediately after the ceremony for our guests to enjoy while we were doing the pics.  We also had a small guest list (35 people).
  
  Food was served shortly after pictures were done.  Everything was buffet style, which allowed us to keep things more flexible.  This was where we veered from a more typical reception.  We didn't have a DJ or dancing or anything like that, though we did have an Ipod playing for ambience music.  Overall, we kept things simple and relatively easy.  We had good food, good drinks, and a chair/spot at a table for every butt.  We did not set our expectation level to "perfect".  We set it to "happy day because we are getting married and throwing a great party for our closest friends and family".

  

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• MesmrEwe member

  

  January 2021

  Skip the "Unity Cocktail" unless it's at the bar as a drink option...  As others mentioned, it ends up being super cheesy...  
  
  The best way to keep it casual and light hearted is as others mentioned, get the legal details attended to, have your vows well practiced ahead of time (take a maximum of two minutes each so you're both concise and have your humor but not so much that it becomes overload which has potential to go over like a fart in church at your non-religious ceremony), and use brevity to your advantage.  When you bog down with the unnecessary is when it stops being casual and gets deep in a hurry.  The necessary aspects rarely take a lot of time, it's what you add to those that does!

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