The Oblivious Bride: New Traditions

1 Written by jenny on August 9, 2010 – 5:00 am

Last week, I discussed a few wedding traditions that my fiancé and I are considering to include in our wedding festivities.  Besides those time-honored traditions, we are also thinking of a few ways to express who we are as a couple.  The hope is that these new traditions will have our guests saying, “That is so Jenny and Chris.”  But what are those things that define us?

Reviewing Our Wedding Goals

As readers may recall, when we began planning this wedding, my fiancé and I set out our wedding goals.  These goals have helped us make decisions throughout the planning process from our wedding venue to our catering options.  Our original goals were:

1. Each guest will walk away having made at least 5 new friends.
2. Guests would uniformly call the wedding fun and unique.
3. The wedding will be “ours”.

We really thought our last goal was vague and we needed to know what “ours” means. That meant understanding how our friends and family perceive us.  There are many things I think people associate with me and there are many things I think people associate with my fiancé.  But we struggled thinking of what people thought of us together as a couple.  For example, we know other couples that are easy to define – the outdoorsy couple, the artistic couple, the animal lovers, the health nuts, the sports lovers, the party planners.  So we began asking our friends for help.  What kind of couple are we?  When they think of us, what do they think of?  With their help, we were able to hone in on one common answer – we both value experiences.  In other words, we are more likely to spend money going to a concert or throwing a dinner party than we are on buying “stuff”.  We love going on road trips, taking the scenic route, and yes, dressing up for theme parties.  What we love is the act of sharing and interacting with others while we do things.  So we decided on our new wedding goal:

3.  The wedding will be experiential.

The Experiential Wedding

Photo by Kendall’s Entertaining Life

With our new wedding goal in mind, we could create new wedding traditions that provide a memorable experience for our guests.  For example, instead of a simple drink bar, we could set up a make-your-own sangria station.  Instead of passed hors d’oeuvres, we could set up a taco bar.  The focus would be that our guests would be “doing” something during the wedding and not just waiting around for something to happen.  From the days leading up to the wedding to the actual ceremony and reception, we are creating activities and experiences for all of our guests.  Not only will they be fun and unique, our guests will hopefully be able to meet each other through them.  And hopefully, our guests can have great conversations about what they are doing with the new friends they made while they are doing it.

Next Week: Decorations & Decor