Who's having a secular (non-religious) ceremony?

We are having a secular wedding. Our best friend is officiating it. We are walking down the aisle, doing the vows and I dos, and then walking back up the aisle husband and wife. We aren't doing any sand or unity candle, no readings or special music. I'm hoping it lasts about 10-15 minutes with all the walking included.

About half of my couples choose a civil ceremony. We include poems and readings. Since most are on the beach, the unity sand is popular. I've heard just about every type of music at these weddings.

Dup post

We had a secular ceremony that my husband and I wrote together. It was one of the more challenging parts of our wedding planning process so start early if you plan to write your own ceremony. I loved how it turned out though since the entire ceremony was our version of us. We skipped any special unity ceremonies, had two readings, and his uncle officiated.

An old friend of mine is an officiant and he will be officiating our wedding. He gave me a poem he reads at non-religious ceremonies and I really liked it. We will be using that. I do not think we will be using music to walk down the isle to. I don't feel like orchestrating that shit and I think it is more likely to get screwed up. It is a small ceremony at a different location than the reception and I am not paying for someone else to do music either.

We are having and officiant from a comapny and she does every type of wedding. We are so lucky they have a "handbook" we pick and choose things from the fill a schedule. We are free to change any thing we want but it's nice to have it all laid out. We will be doing a wine ceremony and also presenting my daughter a necklace from my FH. I'm still not sure about readings or a special song. My FH really wants me to walk down the aisle to cannon in d.

I found this awesome poem/reading called a hand ceremony, so I think that's what we are going to be doing for the unity part. It's beautiful and I just love it!!!! FFIL is officiating for us...... he wants to add in a very small reading/poem that he will read which we obliged too bc my FHs parents are religious and so we wanted to give a little as well.

I found this site online which will produce a script for you depending on the type of ceremony you wish to have. I tweaked it and added the hand ceremony in and I also want to add in 2 poems that will be read by my dad and my uncle.

The one thing I'm really stuck on though is the music..... my FH's friend has offered to sing for our ceremony. He's a professional and does musicals on stage, along with weddings as well (we didn't ask him, he approach us and offered to sing for us-which of course we accepted). Any thoughts about the music?

We are - we are having a friend officiate and we still haven't decided on if we will do a unity ceremony - but we are doing the script and since we are big WWE fans we will incorporate that in to the script some how

We had an officiant who happens to be a family friend. We spent about three hours with her one afternoon putting together a ceremony using pieces from different samples she had and changing words as we went. We also incorporated the breaking of the glass, but with a more secular lens. And we wrote our own vows to one another and read them out loud. Whole thing was about 15 minutes. Bridal procession walked down to Here Comes the Sun, I walked down to I Choose you, and we all walked back up to Up All Night, all instrumental

Our ceremony was secular. We found an officiant through the ww app and she was awesome! We did the hand ceremony. We also did a ring warming. Two poems read by a friend. One was "you are tired" by ee Cummings and the other was an original poem my extremely talented friend wrote for us. It was a surprise, we didn't hear it until the ceremony. One of my favorite things ever!

My uncle plays dulcimer and did all the ceremony music, which I don't recall as being any song in particular so no real help there.

So I just looked up what a hand ceremony was and I found a sample script. Needless to say, it made me cry and now I have to add it to our ceremony.

We are! We found our officiant on WW and she does both secular and religious ceremonies, so we told her what we want and she's going to write a ceremony for us. We're going to have a chocolate ceremony for unity, because CHOCOLATE, and we're having steel pans for music since it's a beach wedding.

We are having a secularish wedding (secular with some updated religious traditions that we're doing for cultural significance, not religious significance). My aunt is officiating. We will walk down the aisle to some classical pieces and have friends read from Rilke's marriage piece and something else (haven't picked these things yet). We will write our own vows. My mom and sisters are singing "In the Aeroplane Over the Sea" by Neutral Milk Hotel. We are doing a Greek wedding crowning because FH is Greek and we will use his parents' crowns but we'll take all the God language out of it and my aunt will explain the cultural significance. We will also have a chuppah and step on the glass because I am a secular Jew. We are signing a secular ketubah that will be displayed somewhere in the venue. I'm going to write the majority of the ceremony but I'm not worried about it because I am a professional writer. I'm actually super excited to write it.

@kelly c- isn't it just beautiful? The second I read it I cried and immediately knew it would be a part of our ceremony.

Thanks for everyone's comments!!!! Keep em coming

At those that have put in poems- where did you put them in at?

Op, what site did you find?

We're doing a secular ceremony and I've been having a hard time finding readings I really like. I want the ceremony to be short an sweet.

We are. I hadn't thought of having poetry read, but my dad writes poetry as a hobby so maybe I'll ask him to write something. We will be reciting our own vows. exchanging rings, candy, and handshakes. One of our friends will be officiating. I'm going to walk down the aisle to "Die With You" by Beyonce. Haven't decided on exit music yet.

Readings; http://pinterest.com/celiamilton

The reading board there has like 800 of them, most of them secular.

That's all I got. I don't write legal briefs; pro writers, unless they write weddings, probably shouldn't.

We wrote our own ceremony, and while it was challenging, it ended up being very meaningful and we got a lot of compliments on it. The only reading we included was a short modern interpretation of the seven blessings (Jewish but pretty much secular...) that I read at my brother's wedding and he read at mine. We had a poem in the ceremony originally but I insisted on cutting it to keep the ceremony under 20 mins. We had some of DH's friends sing a song instead of a reading. It was a nice change of pace. We didn't do any unity candles or anything. Oh also in lieu of readings, we read each other "personal statements" that were basically longer versions of vows. We had DH's friend from college officiate and he was awesome.