After countless wedding ceremonies over countless centuries, it’s hard to do something new. Weddings can be tailored to be unique to you and your spouse to be, but you might need some pointers to help you think outside the box. If so, this is the guide for you. Take a look at our tips for twists on classic wedding elements.
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The alternative bouquet
The first thing you’ll notice when you start to plan your wedding is that flowers are expensive. Shockingly expensive. Their beauty is partly a result of their transience, so it makes sense, but if you’d like the idea of holding onto your bouquet as a keepsake there are a lot of alternative options to flowers.
The best option is to get crafty. You can make flowers out of book pages, out of coloured paper, out of foam and buttons, out of semi-precious stones, out of toy models, and more. Or even, simply, find yourself some good fakes.
Then again, if you’re not worried about keeping them but you are worried about them losing their luster throughout the day, go with dried flowers.
The alternative venue
The alternatives here are pretty much endless. If you fancy it, you can get married in the junkyard. If the junkyard is important to you, it will make for a gorgeous wedding venue.
Think about the places that are important to you. Is there somewhere important to your relationship? Somewhere where you can only imagine the two of you in? You can make it somewhere that marked a milestone, like where you proposed or where you met.
Or you can make it somewhere important to you. If you love your city, you can look into getting married in a classic venue, and if you’re more rural you can gather everyone at a secluded spot. Ultimately, a venue is one of the bare bones of the wedding, along with an officiate and a witness, so you can get married wherever you want with no rules.
The alternative engagement ring
There are a lot of interesting trends coming out of the engagement ring world. There are thinner bands, which are making for a daintier ring, as well as the rising popularity of the art deco look (made up of patterns of geometric-cut diamonds), or the Toi et Moi trend, which sees two matched or mismatched gems set together on the same ring, symbolizing two souls coming together.
But the one we love is a simple “twist” on the classic engagement rings. Stones are being set on bands tilted to give it just a little something extra. It’s a modern twist that doesn’t look like it will go out of style in a few years. You can look into engagement ring stone shapes for more inspiration.
The alternative dress
There is a growing trend of adding another, or even a few, more outfits to the wedding day. That head-turning white dress is perfect for the ceremony but, when it comes time to cut a rug at the reception, there’s a high chance that the skirt will get in the way, be at constant risk of a drink spilling on it, or represent a total nightmare when you need help to go to the bathroom.
This is where the alternative dress comes in. You can go with another, lower maintenance dress — maybe with a mid-length skirt rather than the impractical floor length — or you could even look into a white pantsuit.
We’re saying white purely for the sake of the tradition, but you have got the entire rainbow ahead of you. It’s becoming increasingly popular to go with a skinny trouser suit and blazer combo for the reception and increasingly popular to wear any color but white. Why not combine the two?