Personalize Your Wedding Ceremony

Tips to Make Your Wedding Deeply Personal

There are a number of ways to make your wedding feel like a deeply personal expression of you and your relationship. Here are a few tips to personalize your Colorado wedding ceremony:

• Write wedding thank you cards before the ceremony. Don’t wait until after the ceremony is over to sit down and write thank you cards to your guests. Instead, pre-write your wedding thank yous and make sure that each guest receives their own personal thank you note when they enter the venue.
• Provide guests with unique favors. One way to make your ceremony personal is to gift your guests with favors that match the wedding theme and design. Some creative wedding party favors may include matchboxes, coasters, wine stoppers, customized bottle openers, chocolate boxes, candle jars, and personalized hand sanitizer bottles.
• Choose someone for a wedding ceremony reading. Make your wedding ceremony more interesting by introducing a reading. A wedding reading is a meaningful poem, psalm, story, or other text that is typically introduced by the wedding officiant and then spoken out loud by a guest or member of the wedding party. The reading can be religious or non-religious, depending on the type of ceremony you want. You may call on one person to do a single reading or on several people to do multiple readings, with each reading separated by a short musical interlude. While readings are often done by close friends or family members, you might choose to give the task to someone who was not able to participate in one of the earlier pre-wedding parties, such as the engagement party or bridal shower.
• Use a loved one as the wedding officiant. It used to be commonplace for weddings to be officiated by a pastor or minister. These days, however, many brides and grooms are opting to make their weddings a bit more personal by using a friend or relative as the officiant – particularly when the ceremony is secular or non-religious. In Colorado and most other states, it is legal for anyone to officiate a wedding. Afterward, the bride and groom can actually solemnize the marriage and make it legal by signing the marriage license themselves. In addition to making the ceremony more personal, another good reason to have a friend or family member officiate your wedding is that it will reduce costs.
• Pick a modern song to walk down the aisle to. Instead of entering the ceremony and walking down the aisle while the traditional bridal entrance song (“Here Comes the Bride”) plays, some brides opt to strut to a processional song that helps to convey their more personal and unique love story. You can make your way down the aisle with a modern song, such as a love ballad, a rock classic, a guitar solo, or even a jazz number.
• Write your own vows. The bride and groom may want to forgo the more conventional wedding vows and instead personalize their ceremony by writing unique vows that capture the spirit and essence of their relationship. Crafting your own vows for the wedding ceremony can be a deeply personal experience that allows you to share everything you love about your partner. You can tell your soon-to-be-spouse exactly what it is that you love about them and what you are promising to them in your future life together. Writing your own vows will also allow you to be funny, romantic, or both as you publicly declare your love for each other.