Everyone’s already doing it, but you can do it your own way. Similar to the fact that no wedding day needs to be a cookie-cutter experience, you can personalize your ceremony too! Witness first-hand experiences using a variety of wedding ceremony ideas to inspire your own elopement day!
Start Your Elopement Ceremony Ideas with What Matters Most to You
I’ve gushed about my amazing team member already but I’ll say it again (because seriously, she’s the best): Sarah Kay is a gold mine of support on your wedding day. A combination of wedding officiant, designer, and photography assistant–she fills every gap that you could have never predicted.
Pulling from her knowledge and my own year-round Grand Canyon elopement photographer experiences, together, we have ample resources for building your wedding ceremony timeline. This process of selecting your own wedding ceremony ideas always starts with you!
According to Sarah Kay, what excites her the most about wedding ceremony planning is “creating ceremonies that embody important elements for the couple in artistic ways.” As she explains, this means “finding physical metaphors for them to present their preferred honoring whether that be as a present to the guest, or mentioning honored ancestors.”
For example, at one Grand Canyon elopement, the couple utilized sea glass from the beach where the bride and her brother visited for summer camp and had many favorite childhood memories. Pulling from her own artistic background, Sarah Kay often creates with materials that are localized or provided by the couple.
She added the glass to a boutonniere that the bride gifted to her brother during the ceremony. Sarah Kay described it as “Magic–their magic, not mine. Often as I create, I get so much joy out of helping them highlight their honoring points artistically.” Other potential elements can include gold, lace, fur, turquoise, leather, horns, baby’s breath, silver, pearl, and roses. All of which she has used!
As this all-in-one elopement planner summarized, “These textures and naturally-sourced materials end up telling a very personalized story for the couple that radiates from them.”
Wedding Ceremony Ideas: How to Build Your Wedding Ceremony Timeline
Working primarily within the realm of Arizona elopements, I spend the majority of my time photographing couples inside of Grand Canyon National Park. With that comes the added responsibility of respecting the land we’re permitted to temporarily inhabit for these events. This also means that your wedding ceremony ideas can include ones that are tied to the land itself.
An elopement timeline generally consists of the opening, body, exchange and a closing. Couples may highlight connections to either their own culture or the new one they are forming together through their intercultural marriage. Sarah Kay elaborates on options for these stages:
- sage smudging ceremony using Arizona sage and cedar
- drumming and a moment of silence
- honoring of the four directions
- acoustic music is allowed in national parks so we can utilize Arizona-based guitarists, violinists, and cellists.
Wedding Ceremony Ideas: Essentials You Won’t Want to Forget
Drawing from her own experience as a former camp director and outdoor national park educator, Sarah Kay will assist in a lot of elopement photography prep. This extends to having her even hiding in the foreground to fix the dress or hair in the wind!
Drawing from our experience with the unpredictability of an outdoor national park wedding, these are some essentials we both recommend bringing along with you on the day:
- Furs, Pendleton wool blankets, hand warmers, insulated leggings
- Umbrellas, sunscreen, chapstick
- Snacks, water
- Mirrors, non-slip shoe stickers (especially for dress shoes), spare set of shoes (sneakers or hiking boots)
Unique Wedding Ceremony Ideas That Include Family
A final way to individualize your wedding day is finding ways to include your family. We make it a point to include everyone present by giving them each a small role in the wedding unity ceremony. Sarah Kay will bring along extra instruments when music is involved so that all can participate. As she notes, “it is a lovely way to empower the whole wedding party.”
At one elopement for a blended family, Sarah Kay shared that “each child held a role in the ceremony including a gifted silver ring on a chain that each parent placed upon their partner’s child.” There are ways to incorporate family members both past and present into the ceremony even when you have a zero-guest elopement.
As your wedding coordinator, Sarah Kay sees it as her responsibility to honor elders or others unable to be present within the ceremony. She will incorporate turquoise or pearl as a representation of that missing elder blending it into flowers and boutonnieres.
These missing members can also be mentioned within the elopement ceremony script. Other options include these wedding ceremony ideas for factoring in family:
- Small historic bottle filled with ashes and placed in the groom’s pocket.
- Boutonnieres made out of lockets with photos of missing grandparents.
- A blessing stitched inside the hem of the dress with old birthday card quotes.
The options are endless, and the day is yours to make however you want it to feel!
Sarah Kay and I can’t wait to team up together to make the magic of your day happen!
Wedding Vendors
Wedding Officiant & Wedding Coordinator | Sarah Kay
Photographer | Terri Attridge Photography
