Are you tired of the cliche American wedding and looking for alternative wedding ideas? In this article we will explore some ways to keep your wedding interesting and different. We’ll talk about alternative wedding venues, ceremony and reception ideas. Let’s dive right in!
Alternative Wedding Venue Ideas
Imagine having your wedding in the middle of the woods! You could decorate a small forest grove with wildflowers and ferns and use fallen logs as seats for the guests. You could even find some fun fairy and elf outfits to wear.
Perhaps there’s an ancient castle ruin or an old stone quarry that would make the perfect alternative wedding venue location. An old rustic bar could be cleaned up a bit and serve as a place to tie the knot.
Did you know getting married at your local library was a thing? Maybe you’re even more adventurous. Why not get married on the top of a mountain? As long as your wedding guests are okay with your choice, the sky’s the limit for finding an alternative wedding venue that suits you. One thing is for sure, you’ll probably save a lot of money by taking a road less traveled.
Alternative Ceremony Ideas
As long as you meet the legal requirement for the number of witnesses that need to be present at your wedding you can keep your wedding pretty small. Why not just invite one or two of your closest family members or friends? In some states it could even be just you, your partner and the wedding officiant. This would be an elopement ceremony.
Perhaps a destination wedding is the type of difference you are after. Imagine strolling arm in arm through Paris, or sipping wine with your partner in a beautiful chalet in the Italian countryside.
Try collecting some ideas from other cultures and finding a way to include different traditions in your wedding. Include Eastern traditions like a Henna hand painting ceremony or wearing a colorful wedding dress. Especially if you have family roots that connect you to a different part of the world, it can be a great way of honoring your family’s heritage to include aspects of its culture in the wedding.
Alternative Wedding Officiant
It might not be so alternative these days but having your best friend officiate your wedding is a great way to have a personalized and meaningful ceremony. These days it’s also more simple than ever to get ordained online and obtain the legal status to officiate a wedding. There’s a few websites that offer this service for free like American Marriage Ministries (AMM) and Universal Life Church (ULC). Signing up only takes a couple minutes and in most states you can officiate the wedding as soon as you’re ordained with no official registration necessary.
Having a friend officiate your wedding will also save you the extra time and money that you might otherwise spend on hiring a professional officiant.
Alternative Wedding Entertainment
Do you also want to avoid having a cliche wedding party with a DJ spinning popular dance hits while everybody wiggles on the dance floor? Consider some of these options. Some fun party game examples are charades, pictionary, or two truths and a lie. Wedding games help make the experience interactive and certainly would certainly be different than the typical wedding party. You could even have wedding karaoke and kick things off with the couple singing a duet together!
Hopefully this article gave you some good alternative wedding ideas. Whether it’s your best friend officiating, or a wedding on top of a Rocky Mountain Peak, you’ll find some way to make it interesting and different.
-Bernard Paul