Weddings between two people are a celebration of love and a time to be joyful. They should be all inclusive but, unfortunately, traditional weddings have had strictly defined masculine and feminine roles. If that does not sit well with you and the one you love, you shouldn’t feel pressured to conform to tradition. Create the wedding of your dreams with a little help on how to plan a non-binary wedding.
Hire a wedding planner
Weddings can be stressful occasions so it is a good idea to hire a wedding planner who can remove the headaches and help your big day to be everything you want it to be. Make sure that your wedding planner has worked with non-binary couples before. They will have experience in making your day what you want it to be and can even make suggestions that you haven’t thought of before. A wedding planner with no experience may not understand your requirements as well as you might like them to, and this can make your day harder rather than easier to organise.
Select bespoke invitations
Gendered wedding language can start as soon as you send out the invitations to “Mr and Mrs” depicting a happy binary couple on the front. Bespoke invitations can be designed to be whatever you want them to be. Have a look online for some personalised non binary wedding invitations. These are sent as e-invitations which is great because this means that you can address your guests by their names rather than feeling obliged to use a title.
Entrance
It is customary for the groom to stand at the altar and the bride to be walked down the aisle by her father. However, anything that doesn’t make you feel comfortable has no place at your wedding. You can have a wedding procession for two if you want, or you can skip this part altogether. Another idea would be for you to both enter the space and meet in the middle. The choice is yours.
Write your own vows
Traditional wedding vows are quite gender specific with each party promising different things depending on their gender specific status within the marriage. This has been outdated for decades but not updated. Rather than trying to remove the gender specification in your wedding vows, why not break with tradition entirely and write your own? That way, you can make the exchange of vows a very powerful, personal experience that is specific to the two of you rather than having to repeat what couples have been saying for centuries when getting married parrot fashion. Your vows might mean a lot more to you if they are personal to you.
Attire
Tradition states that wedding attire is gender specific with the bride wearing white and the groom wearing a tuxedo. Actually, white has only been a wedding colour for brides since the mid-1800s and before this, a bride would wear their best dress, which wasn’t colour specific. Sometimes traditions aren’t as old as they seem.
A non-binary wedding should make you both feel comfortable, so attire should be selected by those taking part. It may be that you want to dress smartly depending on the venue. However, if this doesn’t make you feel comfortable then go for a more casual approach. Another popular style these days is a themed wedding where guests get to dress up too. You should probably include the theme on the wedding invitations though so that they have time to prepare their outfits.
Attire
It is a good idea to go through the list of things that need to be done in preparation for the wedding. Traditionally there were male and female type roles but splitting the tasks evenly or playing to your own strengths is a good way to avoid getting stressed out and making your non-binary wedding run more smoothly. It is a good idea to get friends and family to help out as this will make them feel included and it could save you a small fortune if they can do it for free or cost price – something that you would usually have to pay for.
It is traditional for the bride’s father to pay for the wedding but that has been going out of fashion recently. The fact that couples tend to marry later, and weddings have become more expensive than they used to be, has meant that both sides often pay equally now. Many couples find that paying for their own wedding is a good way to make sure other people stay out of the decision-making process, thus avoiding falling out with them.
