Category Archive

traditions

Folks having offbeat weddings often wrestle with questions like, do I have to include wedding traditions? What if I don’t want my dad to walk me down the aisle? What if I don’t like the garter toss? What if I don’t want to do a cake cutting (or even have cake!?). This archive is our collection of posts about how to choose which wedding traditions to include, and which to skip.

7561848024 a704e4cd92 c

I let my fiancé see my dress before the wedding, and I lived to tell the tale

“He saw you?!” they say in a mixture of disgust and horror. Yes. He did see me. I asked him to take the photos. And yet, I don’t feel as if our relationship is doomed for failure. Weird.

236568507 19079465c0

Not being given away: how I skipped the aisle-walking drama

For some women, walking down the aisle with their father (or fathers!) can be a really beautiful way to honor the role that relationship has played.

For me, despite the fact that I’m a total daddy’s girl, it wasn’t a tradition that felt like a fit with my ceremony.

discarding wedding traditions on offbeat bride

Discarding wedding traditions and getting married on our own terms

With every questionable-twist of the lip, my matrimony-related-decision-making process, comes slightly un-done and I’m left asking myself; if the decisions I’m making about our wedding, which will ultimately be the bunting-draped rocket that launches us into married life, are the right ones for us? I’m talking about the decisions that dictate how much, and what kind of tradition we’ll be incorporating into our marriage. This I know, is the female fiasco that plagues every slightly-inclined-to-call-herself-feminist-thinking bride to ever question the merits of “something blue.”

8671073730 1b2695b29e c

Tough conversations about marriage: why an online prenup is a good start

Recently, an old friend of mine decided to have a non-legal commitment ceremony… a commitzvah, they called it. For various reasons, she and her dude decided they didn’t want to legally get married, but you know what they did instead? They sat down with a lawyer, and had some really, really difficult conversations and worked out a legally-binding commitment agreement. Conversations about money. Conversations about children and aging parents. Conversations about fidelity and divorce. Realistically, because they opted to build their legally-binding commitment from scratch, they had conversations that many of us planning state-recognized marriages don’t have.