There is nothing we love more than helping our sweet couples share their love with their closest friends and family! We believe your wedding is a testament to your love story and all the little details of your big day are the perfect opportunities to showcase that.
Stuck on how to authentically and seamlessly incorporate unique wedding ideas into your wedding? We suggest getting started by making a list with your fiancé of your favorite elements of your relationship. Ask yourself questions like:
- How did you meet?
- What was your most memorable early date?
- What are your favorite activities to do together?
- Where did you get engaged?
Brainstorming answers to these questions will help you both realize what parts of your relationship you want to highlight in your wedding design.
For example, if you and your fiancé met through Bumble, you might opt to have a fun wedding cake topper that says “Meant to Bee” or offer mini jars of local honey with custom labels as wedding favors. Personalizing your wedding doesn’t have to be over the top or out of budget. It simply means making your wedding your own through decorative and functional details.
Let us help you make your wedding day distinctively yours with these 12 unique wedding ideas. We’ve curated our top picks here and broken it down by ceremony, cocktail hour, and reception.
Wedding Ceremony
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Music Choices
Selecting songs that hold meaning to you and your fiancé is such a fun way to feature your personalities! Don’t feel obligated to stick to the traditional Wedding March or Pachelbel’s Canon. Have fun with it and choose songs to walk down the aisle to that you actually love!
Whether that’s ACDC’s “Back in Black” for the guys or Taylor Swift’s “Love Story” for the girls, personalizing the processional music will set the perfect stage for you to get married. Plus, if you know you’ll have pre-ceremony jitters, hearing your favorite tunes before you walk in will help ease any last minute nerves.
Pro tip: Don’t forget to customize the prelude music before the ceremony as well!
Big Disney fans? Have your DJ play instrumental Disney love songs.
Movie buffs? Play the Harry Potter or the Lord of the Rings scores before the festivities begin.
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Grand Entrance
Another way to have fun and release any butterflies before you tie the knot, consider unique ways to make your grand entrance into the ceremony. We’ve seen entrances by speedboat, horse and carriage, exotic car, and even helicopter! No matter how you choose to enter, make sure to pick a similarly themed song for a show-stopping moment all your own.
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Unity Ceremony
A unity ceremony is an action during your wedding ceremony that symbolizes two people coming together as one. Traditionally, this has been a unity candle ceremony, where each partner has a candle and together, they light a third, larger one in the center.
Unity ceremonies have come a long way though, and we love seeing couples put their own unique twist on them, like having a wine box ceremony, handfasting ceremony, unity glass ceremony, or love locks ceremony (For full descriptions of each of these and further unity ceremony ideas, check out our other post HERE!).
If you have kids, a charming way to include them and solidify your new family is to have a family unity ceremony. This is a great way to officially blend the two families into one and directly involve the kids, like it is their big day too…because it is!
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Custom Vows
Perhaps the sweetest unique wedding idea yet, we always admire when couples opt to write their own vows to each other! There is never a dry eye in the house and couples often say that sharing this intimate moment with one another during the ceremony is their favorite part of the entire day.
Pro tip: If you and your partner are prone to stage fright or simply want to keep this moment private, consider having a first look or first touch prior to the ceremony and reading your custom vows to each other then.
Cocktail Hour
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Unique Entertainment
Gone are the days when you have to choose between a DJ or band for your wedding! There is a wider variety of music vendors now, who are still well versed in the art of performing and emceeing at a wedding. We’ve seen artists, who are live musician and DJ combos. This means that they sing and play acoustic guitar or piano live for cocktail hour and dinner, and then switch to DJing the rest of the wedding when it is time to get the party started.
Entertainment also means more than music! We’ve found that couples, particularly in the last few years, want to make their wedding a full experience for their loved ones and a unique way to do that is through guest interaction. Consider having a caricature artist create sketches of your guests in real time at the wedding. The best part? This doubles as both mind blowing entertainment and a personalized wedding favor that your guests will be raving about for years to come!
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Family Photos
Let’s be completely honest here: Taking family portraits is the part of the wedding that can be a little cumbersome. Trying to wrangle your 4-year-old flower girl, your 85-year-old grandpa, and everyone else in between on a timeline can be straight up stressful for both you and your new spouse.
We recommend mixing it up and incorporating fun photos in between all the traditional, posed shots. Maybe after a picture of you and your siblings, you all shoot the camera your best “Blue Steel” looks, or you and all your cousins strike your best poses, “America’s Next Top Model” style. Your parents will also love the idea of you and your new husband or wife recreating one of the pictures from their wedding day. It’s a sweet and sentimental tribute that you can then gift to them after you get your wedding pictures back.
Knowing that you can let loose and have fun with the family photos will help you look forward to this part of the day and infuse your personality into these otherwise conventional shots. It’s a win-win!
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Signature Drinks
Don’t miss the chance to spice up your bar offerings by having signature drinks! Typically known as “his and hers” drinks, you can name one drink after your partner and the other after yourself. If you have furry friends that can’t make it to the wedding, you can pay tribute to them by naming your signature drinks after them as well. What’s more, if a certain TV show has been pivotal to your journey as a couple, you might name your drinks after the main characters (The Ross and Rachel, anyone?).
Wedding Reception
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Private First Dance
You may have heard of a private last dance; a special dance with just the two of you while all your guests are lining up outside for the grand exit at the end of the wedding. Since we are all about creating unique, personal moments for you and your new spouse, we are here to say that a private first dance may be a better option for you!
Instead of getting whisked into family portraits right after the ceremony, opt to stroll into your reception space, have your DJ play your favorite song, and share a private dance to celebrate your brand new marriage. Not only will you get to view the reception and see your wedding vision come to life before anyone else, but you’ll get a quiet, distraction-free moment to truly be present with your new hubby or wifey right after you’ve tied the knot.
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Escort Cards
Showing your guests to their seats doesn’t have to be confusing or boring! There is a myriad of creative ways to invite your guests into the reception, from champagne or tequila shot walls to personalized, handwritten notes to each guest. This is an ideal opportunity to include personal details of your relationship into the wedding. Is music a big part of your story? Your escort cards could be individual guitar picks with each guest’s name and table written on them. Or maybe you two initially bonded over your love of travel, so your escort cards are personalized luggage tags. The possibilities are endless!
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Table Numbers
Going hand in hand with your escort cards, your table numbers deserve customization too! Another part of your relationship can take center stage here. Rather than marking your reception tables numerically, name each table after places you’ve visited together or songs that hold special meaning to you both. Other examples we love include naming the tables after your favorite flowers or cherished family recipes. Each table could be named after a different dish and you can list the full recipe on the back of every table name sign. It’s a sweet nod to your family roots and one that your guests will surely get a kick out of!
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Cake & Dessert
If you can’t tell by now, we are huge fans of unconventional wedding details! We are also huge fans of wedding cake. While some couples may choose a normal flavor like vanilla or chocolate, you might be like us and favor more uncommon flavors like chocolate chip cookie dough or piña colada. Salted caramel, strawberries & cream, lemon, dulce de leche… We’re hungry just thinking about them! You can also supplement your cake with other petit fours, like macarons, mini cupcakes, tarts, donuts and more.
Whether you go simple or whimsical for the cake’s design, we suggest finding a way to include a little bit of your story there too.
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Grand Exit
Using sparklers to light up your grand exit at the end of the reception is classic and always makes for breathtaking photos! However, if you crave more of a unique exit, think about what else can help end the night on the most festive of notes and still show off your personalities. Maybe glow sticks, paper lanterns, streamers, ribbon wands, glow-in-the-dark bubbles or even lightsabers are more your style!
And don’t forget your getaway car! Whether you choose a classic limo, vintage car, exotic car, or another form of transportation, make sure it reflects your personalities.
Ready to Start Wedding Planning?
We had so much fun putting together these 12 unique wedding ideas for you and we hope that you have just as much fun putting these ideas into action for a one-of-a-kind wedding day that is unmistakably yours.
Are you ready to start wedding planning? We’re ready too! Hit the button below to contact our team. We can’t wait to welcome you into the Weddings Inc. family!
