How are you including friends or family in your ceremony?

My mom and dad will walk me down the aisle. The small children will be flower girls and ring bearers. There are 8 bridesmaids who are my closest friends and family.

In our circles, it’s considered a huge honor to be a guest with no responsibility beyond enjoying yourself. At the same time, a lot of the current trends are not done. For example, the officiant recites readings, there is no MC or grand entrance at the reception, no signage anywhere because someone works as a greeter/usher and no one is confused by what is going on. Everyone feels special and included. There’s always at least one family member who has years of experience cutting the cake. We asked younger cousins to act as ushers and a close friend walked me down the aisle to keep me from freezing up due to nerves in front of anyone. My mother figure and husband’s parents were given corsages/bouts.

I am not Christian and do not want to get married in a church, but since my fiance is Christian and wanted a church wedding (He had to decide between church wedding or no first look because he was very against one and I wanted one and he decided no first look was more important to him than a church wedding), I decided it would be nice if one important person from each side read a prayer at the ceremony.

My husband of 37 years and I are having a Catholic "convalidation" wedding ceremony in June. We had a small church wedding originally but couldn't have a Catholic wedding ceremony til now. Our ceremony will be performed at the end of Sunday Mass at our church. The officiant will be our parish priest/pastor. The MOH is my closest, dearest friend who also happens to be the church's Music/Choir Director and organist. The BM is our 36 year old son. He has 2 children, a boy 12 and girl 9. The plan is to have the kids bring up the Offertory Gifts of bread and wine during the Mass. I am hoping our son will agree to read one or both of the readings of the day. And as it's a regular choir Mass, the choir, of which I've been a member for nearly 15 years, will be singing and I plan to ask one of my fellow cantors to cantor the Mass. (a cantor is the "leader of song") And my MOH/organist friend, at my request, will sing the Schubert Ave Maria. There won't be any other family, or friends beyond those who are members of the parish who are attending that Mass, at the ceremony, which will be short and low key. (We may let my husband's best friend and our mayor know what's happening that day; they're both parish members. But there won't be any invitations.) Our parents are deceased as are most of our aunts and uncles, and the remaining family lives far away.

Unpopular opinion but we made them guests. In our families and friends, guests don’t take on duties of officiants such as readings unless they are chosen as officiants from the beginning. Not everyone views being a bridesmaid as being an honor, so getting upset at not being picked is a foreign idea to alot of people. On the flip side, guests don’t take on coordinator roles either with the exception of greeters which include guestbook attendant and ushers. For that reason, we skipped all signage because no one would pay attention to it and it replaces people. There is always one older guest with years of experience who cuts the cake to serve to guests as well.


For our guests, we didn’t want anyone to work. Our attendants did no work aside from walking down the aisle and posing for pre ceremony pictures. We had a great group of family and friends who came from all over to celebrate.

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I think was very wise. I'm not planning a large wedding at all, just a Catholic convalidation ceremony, and when we were married originally, we had a small church wedding and my brother (his wife was MOH) refused to usher. Not sure why, but it was OK. Our BM ushered when necessary as the guests arrived, and there weren't that many, perhaps 30 friends and relatives, besides the ladies in my chorus who sang near the end of the ceremony.