Nowadays lots of my clients express a desire to personalize their wedding. In fact, I’d even go so far to say that they feel the pressure to personalize every single detail. I don’t find that necessary. I think the personalization of weddings has gotten a bit out of hand (much like the fun DIY weddings of days past). So I wanted to outline my top 5 favorite and EASY ways to personalize your wedding:

Your Wedding Ceremony

Lest ye forget, the ceremony is the whole reason you’re having a wedding in the first place. It marks the official moment you and your partner actually get married. I find that the best way to personalize your wedding is to make the ceremony truly reflect you as a couple. How? That could simply mean making sure your pastor or rabbi really knows you both individually and as a couple. It could mean you both taking the time to write the ceremony yourselves. It could mean incorporating some favorite readings that reflect your own partnership and future together. There are tons of ways to make your ceremony personal - I always urge clients to put the most thought into this part of the day, that so often gets overlooked, because it really is the emotional center of the entire event.

Music

Whether you’re a musical person or not, music connects to most of us on a pretty emotional and personal level. So another very easy way to personalize your wedding is to be thoughtful about your music throughout the event. Process into your ceremony to a special song. If you’re doing parents dances, pick songs that mean something to you both. Have music that you love but that isn’t danceable or ceremony-worthy but still reflects you or your partner? Use it at the cocktail hour!

Wedding logo

Photo by Justin McCallum

I used to scoff a bit at wedding logos - I felt as though it really hit home that your wedding was something to “market” (belch). But - I will say that if you take the time to create one that feels meaningful to you and your partner, you then have ONE thing that you can use everywhere! It makes a lot of decisions way easier - what to put on the program, the cake, lighting, favors, invites, website, etc? Your logo. BAM. Decision done, now you can go off and do other fun things with your day, all while personalizing that wedding of yours :)

Look beyond the centerpieces

Another very easy way to personalize your wedding is to add small little touches to your dining tables - and I’m not talking about votives. I’ve had clients add different Funko Pops to each table cause they were both huge comic fans, clients who framed hilarious quotes from their first online dating conversations, and clients who incorporated all the national parks they’d visited into each dining table.

Cake Toppers

Again, we’re talking easy here. Since you may want to buy a cake topper anyway, why not make it personal? I’ve seen folks have mini figurines made of them (and their dog!) on etsy, one bride’s father hand-crafted their cake topper, and my favorite (I am a musical theatre nerd at heart, remember), a couple use Tangled characters on top of their cake (even Pascal made the cut!). I’ll also mention, my Mom and step-dad deserve a starting-the-trend award since they absolutely SHOCKED their parents back in 1988 by putting some small clown shoe figurines (my step-dad had studied clown/mime back in the day) next to small high heeled figurines in lieu of the traditional cake topper. So this one is close to my heart!