5 Trends For Your Contemporary Wedding Ceremony
Friday, January 10, 2014 at 6:00AM 5 Trends For Your Contemporary Wedding Ceremony
By Annemarie Juhlian, Seattle Wedding Officiant
www.marriedbyannemarie.com
As you are planning your wedding ceremony, kick it up a bit and incorporate unique elements and rituals to celebrate your lifetime moment.
Today’s bride and groom often want their ceremony to be a celebration of their loving relationship and a public opportunity to express their uniqueness as a couple and gratitude to family and friends. A well-designed ceremony offers a gentle balance between the traditional/sacred and contemporary.
As you consider what’s possible for your wedding ceremony, here are 5 fun and unique trends that I see for couples in 2014
1) The Officiant/Minister Moves Around - To create a dynamic ceremony where the presentation is directed not only to the couple but to family and friends, your Officiant/Minister moves around the ceremony space. Not only does this make for a more intimate ceremony but it allows a photographer to get wedding ceremony photos of a couple without having the Officiant/Minister in the way.
2) Pooch Mania! More and more couples are including their beloved dogs within their ceremony – whether this is a walk down the aisle, presenting the rings at the ring exchange or being a part of another ceremony moment.
3) Unexpected Surprises – In the past couple of years, I have worked with couples to incorporate a special surprise and/or unexpected moment into their ceremony. One year, I worked with a groom to create a “proposal moment” before his wedding vows as he never formally proposed to his Sweetheart. Last summer, one of my couples presented hand-crafted and personalized keepsake boxes to their parents with a special note of gratitude. It’s not about a surprise being “big,” it is about a surprise being appropriate and real.
4) Guys and Gals on “Both Sides” – One of the most fun trends I see is “guys and gals” on both sides of a wedding party line-up. For instance, at one recent wedding, a groom had his sister as “Best Person” and she stood up with his guys. At another wedding, I had guys and gals on both sides as this couple had an amazing variety of friends – both male and female.
5) Passing Of The Rings – Here is a new twist on a part of the ring ceremony/exchange. Before a couple exchanges rings, the Officiant/Minister orchestrates the passing of the rings to the wedding party and asks each person to momentarily take the rings and imbue a good wish into the rings. This trend works because it involves the wedding party in the ceremony and invites personal participation.
Annemarie Juhlian is a Seattle-based Non-Denominational Wedding Officiant & Minister. She works with couples of all faiths and traditions to create contemporary and personalized ceremonies. She lives outside of Seattle on Bainbridge Island with her husband, Greg, and their family of special needs dogs. When she isn’t working in the wedding world, you can most often find her working in dog rescue and rehabilitation throughout Seattle/Tacoma, WA. (www.marriedbyannemarie.com)
Meet Annemarie during Weddings in Woodinville 2014 at Willows Lodge-tickets available through Brown Paper Tickets.
