Top Tips for creating a unique, meaningful Wedding
More and more couples are thinking carefully about their wedding day and are looking for a really personal experience - including a fully bespoke ceremony that reflects their values, their love & their story.
The easiest way to achieve this - and my toppest of tips - is to work with a Wedding Celebrant!
A Humanist celebrant-led wedding ceremony will give you and your guests a completely unique experience as every ceremony is written by me from scratch for each couple I have the honour of working with. Here are my ten top tips for creating a ceremony that is complete personal to you both.
With a Humanist wedding - You get a truly personalised wedding ceremony
When you choose a Humanist wedding, your celebrant will create and craft a personal ceremony where every single word is written just for you both. Your wedding ceremony will start as a beautiful blank canvas, with each element chosen to reflect your relationship.
With a civil or religious ceremony there are certain ‘legally prescribed words’ that have to be spoken and responded to by you both and you will usually be given a choice of a couple of standard ceremony scripts to choose from with little to no ability to amend them. Lots of couples find that their ceremony options don’t really seem to suit them, their partnership or their family. With limited options in these situations it can mean the ceremony starts to feel like the bit that you ‘get through’ before starting the party that you’ve spent ages making feel personal to you.
Humanist Ceremony is the opposite of this. It can be as formal or as informal as you like, with as many friends, family and loved ones taking part as you like (or not!) it can truly reflect your values as a modern family. Most of all, a Humanist wedding will be fun, feel-good and fabulous, kickstarting your wedding celebrations!
Hold your ceremony somewhere truly meaningful! A Humanist Wedding can be outside, at home, absolutely ANYWHERE you like!
Always dreamed of getting married on a hilltop? Want to hold your wedding at the coffee shop where you met? Want a relaxed wedding ceremony in your garden under your favourite tree? With a Humanist wedding you can do just that!
Currently all civil ceremonies have to take place in an approved structure. This means that, for example, you may be able to get married in a gazebo at a certain location in that Country House garden but if you wanted to be fully outdoors by their lake then that won’t be permitted.
Perhaps you want to say your vows in a beach wedding ceremony, or use the backdrop of your local art gallery as a wedding venue, or maybe your gran isn’t well enough to travel so you want to get married in her garden. With a Humanist wedding ceremony, you can have your wedding ceremony exactly where you want.
3. Why not involve family, friends and fur-babies in your wedding ceremony!
While your wedding day will definitely focus on the two of you. There may well be other loved ones that you really want to involve in different ways.
Perhaps you want your Schnauzer to be your canine ring-bearer or both sets of parents to add ribbons to your handfasting wedding knot. You might even want your friends to lead a wedding sing-a-long to your love song! All of these things (and so many more) are possible at a Humanist wedding ceremony!
It might also be the case that there are people, important to you both, who are no longer with us. Your Humanist Celebrant can advise and support you if you’d like a sensitive way to honour them as part of your ceremony.
4. Choose a time that works for you! Sunrise elopement or midnight wedding! We’ve all the time in the world!
Did you know that in England you can legally only have a civil ceremony between the hours of 8am and 6pm? It’s thought that these rules date back to when the only place you could get married was a church. The vicar couldn’t marry anyone before concluding morning prayers and no services could happen after evensong (traditionally starting at 6pm). There were also concerns that in a time when dowries and weddings being more arranged by families to help social positioning, getting married after dark, along with a heavy veil, could lead the wrong bride being married off to an unsuspecting groom - ahem - There’s a whole other blog post needed to analyse all the problematic bits of that sentence isn’t there! Anyway - even though now you can get married outside of a church and we’ve mostly got electric lights to help you make sure you’re marrying the correct person… These rules persist.
With a Humanist, celebrant-led wedding, you could plan a ceremony that rolls into your New Years Eve Party and see in the New Year as a married couple. Or if you’re morning people, perhaps you want to have your wedding ceremony as the sun rises over your favourite cliff top view with just the two of you and the pups. A Humanist ceremony gives you the opportunity for a fully flexible wedding day!
5. Reflect your shared interests, cultures or heritages - include wedding rituals to reflect your unique situation
There are so many wedding rituals to choose from to symbolise your partnership. Perhaps you want your different cultures reflected in your wedding day or for all of your children to play a role celebrating your new blended family. Exchanging rings is just one option, and while it’s lovely, it is the only wedding ritual that is included in civil ceremonies. What if you want to be able to include a different or additional symbolic act?
In fact, if you have a civil ceremony you cannot have any ritual that has any connotation to any faith. So you may find that blending all the elements of your shared heritages isn’t an option. So what options are there in a Humanist wedding? You might want to consider:
Ring-warming - Your wedding rings are passed around your guests. Upon receiving the rings, guests hold them in their hand briefly, “warming them up” with good wishes for your future together.
Handfasting - I’ll invite you to join hands, which symbolises you entering this marriage with your own free will. Then some decorative ribbons or cords are wrapped around your hands and a knot is tied - you literally tie the knot!
Lighting a Unity Candle - This usually involves you both lighting one large candle from two smaller ones. The smaller candles represent the merging of two families.
Sand Blending - As many people as you choose take turns pouring coloured sand from individual containers into a joint one. The sand blends together to make a beautiful display.
Planting a Tree - Especially fab in a garden wedding or outdoor ceremony, planting something that will live and grow as you both do.
Sharing a drink from the Quaich - A Quaich is a Scottish traditional two-handled cup. You each take a handle, showing you trust one another to share the cup.
A Humanist Ceremony will be crafted to celebrate all of the strands you are bringing together as a partnership and family!
6. Celebrate each other as individuals as well as an awesome couple in your ceremony
As a Humanist Ceremony is not legally required to include specific wording and is crafted as a bespoke ceremony just for you, it is much easier for it to reflect your values and celebrate not leaning on those hetero-normative or patriarchal tropes that often crop up in standard weddings.
Want to walk down the aisle together with all your parents? Amazing!
Want to involve and honour your chosen family in a fitting way? Fantastic!
Want a ceremony that doesn’t assume that a wedding equals children? Definitely!
Want to announce your new, blended surname in a big-reveal? Let’s do this!
Lots of the ‘standard wedding wording’ in civil or religious ceremonies is actually still very traditional, and while not deliberately exclusive, it definitely doesn’t really reflect lots of couples. You deserve a ceremony that fits you both perfectly - no compromises or crossed fingers!
7. Have a wedding choices advocate! -Your Celebrant has your back!
When you choose to be creative in your wedding planning, shunning the ‘standard’ and being authentic to yourselves, you may face questions and challenges. Know that as your wedding celebrant, I will always have your back and be on your side! I’ll make sure you get the ceremony you want! Whatever that looks like and no matter what other people think! Nevertheless, she persisted! Nevertheless, we persist!
8. Invest in quality and feel reassured! a Humanist Celebrant is fully trained to deliver your perfect day!
One of the unique things about a Humanist Celebrant accredited by Humanists UK is that we are all required to complete a recruitment process and intensive training with multiple assessment points before becoming accredited. We also have to record that we are undertaking continuous professional development to keep that accreditation.
You can rest assured that you’ll have a really high-quality ceremony. One you’ll always remember with joy and that will set the scene for the rest of your wedding day and for your marriage!
9. Step off the Wedding ceremony conveyor belt! As your Celebrant, I’m focused on your wedding day
No one likes to feel they are on a conveyor belt on their wedding day! As your wedding celebrant, I am committed to performing only one wedding a day. I’m not looking at my watch worrying about getting to the next ceremony if you run a little late and I’m not going to get the two of your names confused with any other couple! You’re not going to be my ‘2pm that day’. I’m focussed on your wedding day, your ceremony and you both all day, nothing else!
10. Handpick the person conducting your ceremony
Your wedding will be a day when you want to be surrounded by people you like and love, now more than ever am I right? So wouldn’t it be great if the person with you at the front, the one sharing your story and gently guiding you through your vows, was a wedding celebrant you had chosen and who you had the chance to get to know.
Having a Humanist Celebrant means you can do just that. With a celebrant-led wedding, your ceremony will be delivered by someone you have come to know, like and trust. Not just by the person allocated to your date and who you meet that morning.
Your Humanist Celebrant will take time to meet with you both in the lead up to your wedding, getting to know you both, your story, your likes, your values, crafting a personalised ceremony that is absolutely unique to you and your wedding. On your wedding day, I’ll deliver a ceremony full of true joy and warmheartedness, because, as your celebrant, Iwill have got to know you both and I will be delighted and honoured to share your wedding ceremony with you.
Sounds fabulous right? I hope you’ll agree that there are so many reasons why you should have a Humanist wedding!
Ready to start planning your feel-good, fabulous day with me? Drop me a line and say hello!
FYI... Is a Humanist wedding legally recognised?
At the moment, Humanist ceremonies are sadly not legally recognised in England or Wales. They have been recognised in Scotland since 2005 and are now legally recognised in Jersey and Northern Ireland. But don’t despair! You can still have a feel-good, fabulous personalised Humanist ceremony. I can advise on how you can obtain a statutory legal registration from your local register office for usually around £50. You say all the legally required words, but you don’t have to include any of the ‘wedding-y’ bits unless you want to. You can choose to do this in the days, weeks or even months running up to your Humanist ceremony, or even on the day itself. I’m happy to help you figure out the right plan for you