Saturday, June 11, 2011

Ten Great Ideas for Personalizing Your Wedding

Your wedding is a once-in-a-lifetime event.  It's yours and yours alone! Make the most of it by showing off your creativity and individuality with a few of the following touches:

1.  Personalize Your Wedding Vows:  Include something special in your personally written vows that you know your beloved really loves you to do. Things such as vowing to bake him fresh homemade biscuits on Saturday mornings or vowing you'll remember to give her the yellow roses she loves so much on her birthday are not only individualistic and unique; they give your guests a glimpse into your special love and relationship.

2.  Incorporate your Cultural Heritage into your wedding theme with choice of wedding attire, decor, food, music, dance, and tradition. Mixing yours and your fiance's cultural heritages is really a unique touch, and because it's yours, it works.  Bagpipes and baklava, anyone?

3.  Personalize Your favors:  Ditch the ubiquitous bells and bubbles and give your guests something to talk about!  A bride of one farming family here in Kern County gave small pouches of pistachios, and another gave little jars of honey from hives that beekeepers had brought in to pollinate her dad's almond orchard.  One bride whose hobby is jewelry making gave favors of her own gorgeous handmade beads, no two alike.

4.  Share Childhood Photos:  It's so much fun for your guests to be able to see photos of the bride and groom through the years as you've grown up! You could even do a slideshow set to music. Warning: Give Mom a hankie!

5.  Share Wedding Photos Through the Generations:  Display wedding photos of your parents, grandparents, and even great grandparents.  In this way you are sharing your unique family history and tradition while paying tribute to your loved ones.

6.  Courtship Memorabilia :  Make an album of correspondence sent to one another during your courtship--notes, emails, greeting cards, letters, pressed flowers, snapshots, ticket stubs, etc. Your scrapbook is also a gift to yourselves, one you'll want to keep forever and pass down through the generations.

7.  Groom's Cake:  You can always tell a groom by his cake! It reflects his personal taste and style right down to the choices he makes for cake flavor, filling, and icing.  Make it special and one-of-a-kind by incorporating his profession, hobbies or special interests. This is also a great way to compromise if you want a vanilla wedding cake and he wants chocolate.  Have fun with it!

8.  Guest Performances:  If you've got talented friends or family, invite them to perform at your ceremony or reception.  You can also hire performers to share, through storytelling, song and dance your cultural heritage and traditions.

9:  Song Dedications:  Have your DJ or emcee dedicate a song to someone dear, such as your dad, best friend or child-- a song that reminds you of them, or one that you have shared over the years that has mutual personal meaning.

10: Show Gratitude: Highly effective and totally memorable:  At the close of the evening, gather your guests around for a blessing, if you're spiritually inclined, and to dance, sing and sway together in the spirit of friendship and unity.  Songs like Elton John's "Friends,"  Dionne Warwick's "That's What Friends Are For," or the Beatles' "In My Life" are great selections.

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