How to involve children in your wedding ceremony - 5 Ideas
If you have children in your life, be they your own brood, nieces, nephews or the children of your closest friends they’ll be important to you and you might be thinking of ways you can involve them in your ceremony.
Of course, one way is to involve them in your wedding party as flower children or mini attendants. If you’d like children to play an active role in your wedding or you want children to be included in the symbolism or ritual of your wedding ceremony, here are five ideas:
Involve children in your handfasting
Handfasting is a ceremony where the couple hold hands and two or more ribbons or cords are then gently bound around them while meaningful words or promises are spoken, before the ribbons or cords are tied into a knot.
Involving your children in adding their own handfasting ribbon to your handfasting knot is a really beautiful way of representing you as a wider family. Get each child to pick a ribbon in their favourite colour or with their favourite character on.
Involving children of all ages is especially lovely if you both have children and an amazing way to reflect a blended family at your wedding.
Have children do a reading (or be accompanied to)
There are lots of lovely readings that a child could read and a wedding celebrant can help you find some that work for different reading ages or if you’d like more than one child to read together. If you have children who are too young to read unaccompanied, then why not have a grown up accompany them & read ‘on their behalf’.
I’ve created a ceremony where this happened and it was beautiful! Auntie held the toddler daughter of the couple in her arms and read the following:
My Advice – by Anon
Mum and Dad get married today, I’d like to help them on their way.
So here’s some special advice from me, to help them with our family.
Keep our house filled with laughter, let’s have fun forever after.
Keep the drawer filled up with sweets, and give us children lots of treats.
Make sure you spend time together, to keep your happiness forever.
Make sure you spend lots on us, and then us kids won’t make a fuss.
But the most important thing for you, is to show your love in all you do.
A caring word, a kiss, a touch, and those family cuddles that mean so much.
Another that I really love is A Lovely Love Story by Edward Monkton. This is wonderful when read by more than one child, again I’ve created a ceremony where this was read in a group, it was lovely.
Involve children in your ring-warming
A ring warming ceremony involves passing your wedding ring(s) around your guests before you exchange them during your ceremony. Upon receiving the rings, guests “warm” them up with good wishes, warm thoughts and positive vibes for your future together.
Children make brilliant ring-wranglers (maybe with a grown up co-wrangler if you are nervous!) or they can be given a special moment to hold the rings and send you their wishes, maybe as the last stop before the rings arrive back with you. This is especially lovely for ceremonies where one or both of you already have children.
Create family art with child friendly sand-blending
A Sand-blending ceremony is based on traditional unity ceremonies. During the sand-blending, the couple (and any children or guests you’ve chosen to be involved) will each add a layer of sand from different individual containers into a joint vessel, this forms unique patterns of sand.
The result is a beautiful piece of sand art, symbolising all the important people in your life while still retaining their individual features. Involving your children in adding their own layer into your sand-blending vessel is a really fun way of creating a piece of family art.
Have them sign or decorate your wedding certificate
Humanist wedding ceremonies may not yet be legally recognised in England & Wales, but many couples still choose to include signing a keepsake wedding certificate as a memory of the day.
As this certificate will be your personal keepsake - why not have all the children in your life sign it too or draw a picture to decorate it.
You could even ask older children, with an artistic flair to design the certificate for you ready for your wedding day.
As you can see, there are so many ways to involve children in your humanist wedding ceremony. Your celebrant can help you think of a way that will be really meaningful and authentic to your family and situation.