Your wedding ceremony is the heart of your day – the main event. It is not the ‘boring bit’ that needs to be endured before the party starts! During your wedding ceremony you will be exchanging personal vows, rings, hearing readings from your family and friends, and declaring your lifelong commitment to one another in front of your loved ones.
It’s definitely worth paying attention to the detail of the day, to make sure that everything flows smoothly, nothing is missed and you have the best day ever. The points below will help you to know what to expect from your Celebrant-led wedding ceremony and help you prepare.
Your celebrant will focus on your wedding ceremony itself, they will liaise with key suppliers and ensure that everything happens when it should. One of the questions I often get asked is ‘what happens on the day?’ Read on…
Before your wedding ceremony
- Ensure you reserve enough seats on the front rows for your VIP guests: family members, bridesmaids and any other guests on your VIP list. Putting ‘reserved’ name cards onto chairs is a clear and simple way to make sure there is no confusion over seating
- Remove your engagement ring and place it onto your right hand or put it in a safe place until after the wedding ceremony. Your wedding ring will go on first and then your engagement ring would normally fit over the top
- Give your wedding rings to whoever is acting as ring bearer during your wedding ceremony. This would usually be the best man but can be absolutely anyone. It’s a great opportunity to involve children who can bring the rings to the front and get a round of applause! If you can’t decide between two ring bearers why not have them both? There are, after all, two wedding rings.
- Let your readers know to sit on the ends of rows near to the front, then they won’t disrupt everyone in the row when they come to the front to do their readings
- Appoint a responsible person to play your wedding ceremony music, get them to check speakers and connections well before the ceremony
During your wedding ceremony
- Your Celebrant will ask guests to stand for the bride / groom to walk down the aisle
- The entrance music will start playing
- If there are flower girls, bridesmaids, pageboys, they will walk down the aisle first
- The Bride / Groom walks down the aisle. In the case of a bride and groom wedding, the bride walks on the left (as facing celebrant) and family member (eg father) on her right
- The Celebrant will ask everyone to sit
- Couple turn to face each other
- Celebrant welcomes guests, asks if key family members (eg parents) support / give their blessing to the wedding, family members say ‘we do’. This is entirely optional and would be discussed with the couple at the consultation stage with their celebrant.
- Bride gives her bouquet to the chief bridesmaid for the duration of the wedding ceremony
- If they wish, the couple can be seated during the wedding ceremony and stand to say their vows and exchange rings. This is a personal choice and partly depends on the length of the wedding ceremony and also the comfort levels of the bride’s shoes!
- Towards the end of the wedding ceremony the couple will be invited to sign a commemorative wedding certificate together with their witnesses. This is a lovely photo opportunity for their guests and the official photographer
- The celebrant then announces the happy couple and the bride takes her bouquet back from her chief bridesmaid ready to walk back down the aisle
- Recessional music starts and the couple walk back down the aisle, followed by their guests
If you’d like more information on how a celebrant-led wedding ceremony works, please get in touch. I’d love to hear from you.