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Wedding Vows & Ceremony Discussions
Non-religious ceremony ideas
Hi! We are getting married in an event space and reception in the same space after.
We want a light hearted ceremony that showcases love but isn’t serious or religious. Any ideas on flow of the ceremony or things you’ve done or seen that you loved as a guest? We’ve considered a unity cocktail but are open to any ideas!
We want a light hearted ceremony that showcases love but isn’t serious or religious. Any ideas on flow of the ceremony or things you’ve done or seen that you loved as a guest? We’ve considered a unity cocktail but are open to any ideas!
Thanks!
Re: Non-religious ceremony ideas
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.
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.
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".
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!