Your wedding is, ultimately, all about you and your significant other. That's that! It's your day and it's important you make every effort to make the day your own.
A few ways my husband and I personalized our wedding day are below. Maybe you can incorporate all or a few into your day. Either way, happy wedding planning and more importantly, happy rest of your lives!!
No. 1: The Ceremony
We were fortunate enough to have the Pastor of our Church officiate our wedding. I have been going to my Church since I was three years old and while our current pastor hasn't been there that whole time, he's been there for a lot of it and knows my husband and I well. To us, it was important to have someone we knew officiate this important union and to include God in our ceremony. Let me tell you, I completely felt the Holy Spirit there that day!
My husband and I adored our ceremony and have watched it over and over again. Our Pastor even threw in a joke or two to bust on my Dad (a jokester himself)!
If you don't have someone you know who can officiate the wedding, do things that are true to you in you ceremony. Use songs that have real meaning, include a few loved ones to do readings, have whomever is officiating to ask both sets of parents to rise and ask that they will forever support you.
We also used a slower paced recessional song. Not that it wasn't a happy, upbeat moment, but we really wanted to play "Say You Won't Let Go," (the instrumental version) and it was truly ceremonial to walk down the aisle as Mr. and Mrs. for the first time.
No. 2: Our Favors
More and more these days you see the bride and groom foregoing favors at the wedding. I'm sure it's to cut costs somewhere. And as well as my husband and I know, weddings are expensive and if you're paying for it yourself, as we did, you have to cut where you can and make do with what you have.
I wasn't sure if we were going to do favors but then found something that was meaningful to us. We live in upstate NY and have some property around our house. There's a gentleman down the street from us who has a honey business and some of his bees are on our property deep in the woods behind our house. Property that my husband and I used to ride along on the 4-wheeler when we were first dating many moons ago. So when I saw the idea to give guests small jars of honey, we fell in love with it. We used the honey from our friend down the street, which some could have come from bees right on our property!
Not only did we use the honey jars as our favors, we used them as our seating assignments too! I used my Cricut to print and cut each guest's name with their table number and a "meant to bee..." on it. My mom and I then tied them with a piece of material and twine to each jar. A true labor of love!
No. 3: Introduction Songs
As each one of our wedding party couples were introduced into the reception, we asked the DJ to play a specific song. My husband and I spent some time on choosing a song for each (and we had a blast doing it!). I think our favorites were for my brother and his wife and for my husband's cousin (who is actually who introduced us). My brother and his wife are let's just say, not fans of country music, while my husband and I are. We were visiting them one time (they don't live close to us) and the topic of music came up. They said, do you know they actually have a song about a tractor?! hahaha, well can you guess what their song was? Yup! Big Green Tractor by Jason Aldean. We had a few other inside jokes, including my husband's cousin...and when he realized we picked each person's song, he turned to us and said, "what did you do?" HAHA. He knew something was coming for him!
No. 4: Cupcakes
Instead of a cake, we chose cupcakes. I have always loved cupcakes and have baked a million myself. We decided to be a little unconventional (even though it seems super trendy now) and serve cupcakes instead of a cake. We also decided against feeding each other cake. We did however ask our amazing baker who made the cupcakes to make a special birthday cake since it was one of our guest's birthday that day. So we all sang happy birthday to her as she blew our her candles!
No. 5: Our Wedding Song
I understand that this isn't always possible, but my husband and I picked a song for our first dance that had tremendous meaning. When we first started dating, I too, like my brother and his wife mentioned before, was not a fan of country music (except Shania Twain, she was always my idol!). My husband on the other hand, was ALL about the country music, haha. So the more time I spent with him, the more he made me listen to it! And Kenny Chesney's, "You Had Me From Hello," always got us. The line, "I don't know how it happened, but it happened still," was right out of our own book. SO naturally, this was our first dance song and it meant the world to us!
Hope some of these inspired you to make your wedding your own! Don't be afraid to go against the grain and do what you and your significant other love. Who cares what everyone else thinks? You do you!!
-Larissa
Loved everything about your wedding!!! The honey jars, the atmosphere, the music and dancing, the food and cupcakes. You really did make it your own!