Wedding Day Rituals We Love
Your wedding day is as unique as your love — and you and your partner can commemorate both, using special ceremonies that reflect your values, heritage, or hopes for the future.
Of course, there are plenty of popular wedding day rituals we see all the time, like the bouquet toss, or garter search. While we love these fun rituals as much as anyone, we also have some other ideas for ceremonies that, while maybe not as mainstream, are beautifully meaningful.
Many of these ceremonies have ancient roots — and all are designed to bestow blessings and good luck to the happy couple. We love a little extra magic!
Ring Warming Ceremony
This precious, heart-felt ceremony is a wonderful way to involve your guests in ritualizing your marriage with you.
Simply have all your guests touch your wedding rings, warming them up with their hands, before they’re exchanged. This is said to bless the bands with love and well wishes, and to offer good luck to the couple for their life ahead.
You can keep the rings in one spot for the guests to touch on their way in, or keep them in a pretty small dish and pass it around while they’re seated. The nice thing about this ceremony is that it’s simple, and completely free!
Handfasting Ceremony
This Celtic ceremony has been practiced since before 7000 BC, and is still popular today.
At the altar, the officiant or another person of your choosing binds the couple’s clasped hands and wrists together using a pretty ribbon or braided cord, usually during or after exchanging vows. (You can also save your vows until after if that feels more special.)
This simple and affordable ceremony is meant to symbolize the couple’s unity and security in their many years ahead.
Wine Box Ceremony
This is a wonderful wedding day ritual because it serves you long into the future — rather than being a one-time event. It’s a bit like a time capsule that you get to delight in down the road!
Beforehand, both you and your partner write a love letter to one another. Then, at your ceremony, you place your letters into a box, usually a decorative wooden box, along with a bottle of wine. Then, you lock it up!
Together, you and your new spouse can choose a milestone anniversary to unlock the box and read one another’s letters while enjoying a nice glass of wine. It’s a beautiful and sentimental gift to give your future selves!
Tying the Knot Ceremony
Why not make tying the knot something literal? This ceremony is easy and sweet: simply have a piece of rope at the altar, and work together with your partner to tie a fisherman’s knot into it.
This particular knot is rich with symbolism for your love: it’s one of the strongest and most reliable knots possible — and it grows even stronger under pressure.
Unity Water or Unity Candle Ceremony
These lovely little wedding day rituals are easy to create, and beautiful to witness. For the water ceremony, you and your partner each pour water or wine (or another liquid of your choosing) from two separate glasses into one vessel. In this new glass, your mixed liquid represents the merging of your lives into one.
Another way to create this ceremony is to do it with candles: you and your partner each have a lit candle, and use them to simultaneously light a third candle. This new candle represents the brightness of your new life together.
However you and your love choose to ritualize your beautiful new journey together, it’s the intention behind it that counts. We know your ceremony will be rich and meaningful — because it’s yours!
If you’d like one of the talented photographers from the Whistler Wedding Collective to capture all the magical moments of your special day, you can book with us right here.
