Your Wedding Vows are one way to engage your community. When you tell your community what you are going to do together, you give them something to support.

You can also envision your marriage firmly within your community as part of your vows. This will also encourage people to support you as they understand your desire and determination to be engaged in your community.

Tip: People long to be connected. Your inviting people to your wedding tells them that you want to be connected with them. Sharing your most dearly held dreams, for the success of your loving relationship and your new family, allows them to understand how to support and to celebrate with you. This is what you want!

Ask them to say “Yes!” to your love.

Help them understand that you are looking for their support and celebration over the entire course of your marriage. Their promise to support you will change your lives. (it will also enrich theirs!) The clearer you are about what you need the more easily they can support you.

Tip: Turn the objection question into a question about support and transform  it into a useful segment of the wedding ceremony. Be deliberate about building the support you need.

Eloping may seem simpler. But it can rob you of both sentiment and support that is so helpful when obstacles arise. Keeping the focus on the reason you’re marrying – your great romance – will help you simplify your planning and celebrate what’s important with the people who matter in your life.

Tip: Stay tuned for the seven excellent reasons a public wedding ceremony will make your marriage thrive (and your ceremony much more interesting!)

One of the best ways I ever saw of introducing the guests to one another was a creating a booklet detailing who the guests were, what their work and hobbies were and how they were connected to the bride and groom. The couple had written sweet statements about each person invited to the wedding. The booklets were shared at the wedding. (Better idea is to send them out beforehand.)

Tip: when you choose the guests who will be invited to your wedding, write a one word sentence beside their name about why you’re grateful that they are part of your life — something personal, not generic. Count each and everyone of those blessings, as you invite them, as you send them a little booklet, and then as you see them sitting before you as you’re coming down the aisle at your wedding.

Ann

What’s important is that your wedding ceremony reflect your personalities and your styles. It’s also important (as my web guy would say IMHO as if either one of us weren’t wildly insistent on our opinions!) that the entire wedding have a sense about it… a movement through the engagement notice to the wedding invite to the dresses to the wedding ceremony and on into the reception. You don’t need to spend gobs of money doing that… both restraint and abundance can be gotten to carefully!

Life is rich and we should call upon the richness of life and celebrate it in as many ways as we can!

You can do this too! Your love deserves nothing less!

Believing in you and your love,
Ann