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3 Steps to Personalizing Your Wedding
Every bride wants to create a wedding that is uniquely her. But adding some personal style does not mean you have to banish wedding traditions — or the importance certain traditions carry. Here, experts weigh in on three ways you can ensure your big day carries an air of tradition but also displays who you are as a couple.
Customize
Marisa Manna Ferrell, owner of So Eventful Wedding & Event Coordination in Healdsburg, Calif., encourages her clients to make various wedding elements true to the couple.
For example, rather than signing the traditional guest book, a bride and groom that are are wine fanatics, could have guest sign their names directly on a wine barrel that could later be displayed in their home. This tweak on tradition can be carried out with any item exemplifying the couple’s shared interests, Ferrell says.
Think beyond guest books, too. At her own wedding, Ferrell and her husband gave out mini glass bottles of Patron as party favors, representative of their love for the tequila. Any detail can be shaped or altered to embody the couple, she says. “Ultimately, your tastes, interests, passions and heritage should be captured in the event,” Ferrell says. “Those are the details that people will walk away with and talk about — the details that matter most, that really reflect the bride and groom and really showcase what they’re all about,”
Differentiate
Wedding expert Sharon Naylor, author of “Your Wedding, Your Way” (Adams Media, 2009), says putting a personalized twist on traditional aspects of a wedding is commonplace today. Whether it’s allowing the flavors of the cake to derive from the love story — Boston crème filling if the couple met in Boston — or displaying photos of the couple’s courtship, the event details depict the couple personally without straying too far from tradition. “Brides and grooms have struck a good balance between loving and incorporating tradition and personalizing in small ways,” she says. “They’re finding less crazy ways to make the wedding their own.”
Emphasize
Adhering to tradition despite personalization adds a sense of timelessness to the wedding overall, Naylor says. Drawing in traditions family members may have or maintaining the formality of certain practices stresses their importance and gives the sense that you’re taking the event seriously. “It’s not too creative, it’s not too edgy at times, but there are some traditions that we hold sacred, that our family holds sacred, and we want to include them as large parts of our day.”
Overall, view your wedding as a blank canvas on which you can blend both tradition and personalization. After all, no two weddings are ever alike.
“It’s an opportunity for you to create an incredibly unique day or weekend-long experience for yourselves, your family and your friends,” Ferrell says.
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