Alternative Wedding Ideas for Celebrating Your Love
Because it is different. Celebrating love and commitment in alternative relationships can be as beautiful and meaningful as any other can, providing you work out the ‘Kinks’ ahead of time! Ok. That was a sad joke. Sorry.
Your Wedding Officiant
Do you want a wedding officiant with religious or spiritual leanings? Do you want an officiant at all? Many celebrants are in tune with the cultures of alternative lifestyles, and, believe it or not, many of us are even members of alternative lifestyles. Check around in your community to find a celebrant that suits your needs. Ask your prospective officiant:
� Are you comfortable with the alternative lifestyle we live?
� Do you have a problem with us writing our own ceremony?
âÂ?¢ Would you be willing to travel to the location we’ve chosen? And if so, what additional financial arrangements would you require?
Additional celebrant information can be found at The Universal Life Church site: http://ulc.net and then search their fabulous directory, and Two Grooms and Two Brides site: http://www.twogrooms.com. Many alternative communities have a number of celebrants already, and letting the people you ‘play’ with know you are looking can lead to contacts.
Location
See if your local alternative community has an appropriate and accessible venue for your wedding celebration. Although, if you are inviting ‘vanilla’ folks to participate, you may want to find out first if the dungeon can be decorated without the Whipping Post and Spanking Horse. (the chain hooks in the ceiling can make great hangers for a canopy, though!) Another idea is a park or community center, but be sure to check the park rules to be sure you won’t be arrested in the middle of your wedding by the police hauling you all off to jail. That can be a pain (and not the good kind, either)! A friend’s home or your own backyard is another great idea, and even the most simple home can be decorated and enhanced by adding a few touches.
A terrific and growing resource is Purple Unions Directory, and they have information on everything from celebrants and officiants to honeymoon locations and wedding photography, all gay and/or alternative lifestyle friendly. Purple Unions can be found at http://www.purpleunions.com.
Writing Your Own Personal Vows and Ceremony
This can be a tough exercise in itself! Sit down with your lover and brainstorm on the things you want to say to each other, and what you want your guests to know about your love for each other. A couple of great places to find starter ideas are: http://www.unionoflove.com from the ICCR, International Commitment Ceremonies
Registrar� and http://heart2heartceremonies.com, with an enormous amount of information for alternative lifestyle ceremonies and celebrations.
� A poem (Grow Old with Me, by Robert Browning, comes to mind),
� Music that is meaningful for you and your spouse to be (our wedding theme song was Hurt So Good, because we are into BDSM and love the beat of the song, no pun intended!),
� Decide if you want audience participation, in the form of your guests speaking or sharing a story about your love during the ceremony,
And then, set the ceremony aside for a few days, to settle in your minds, before working on getting it down on paper.
Invitations and Announcements
Outvite has a large selection of invitations and other wedding and social stationary for gay and lesbian unions – http://www.outvite.com; and for the BDSM crowd, I found that designing our own invitations worked best. We found several resources by googling “print invitations” and then selected a simple rose (with thorns, of course) on the front. We got ideas for the inside wording by reading through several of the gay and lesbian sites mentioned above. Somebody could make a fortune, providing quality kinky invitationsâÂ?¦maybe I will do that.
Guests and Family
You want to share your special day with all your friends and family! Or, do you? There is no law that you have to invite anyone you don’t wish to share the day with. If your great-uncle George makes disparaging comments about ‘your lesbo friend’, why in the world would you choose to share this intimate, loving moment with him? Of course, I have no problem with ‘vanilla-izing’ for the comfort of guests, to a point! For my husband and me, we wouldn’t play out a full-fledged caning scene at our wedding, even though that is our current favorite activity. We did, however, have a sacred moment during the ceremony, when I went to my knees in front of him, offered him a single rose, and then he lifted me up to meet his mouth, with a kiss. The vanilla people in the audience knew we were ‘different’ and many knew we were ‘kinky’, but that simple, non-offensive gesture meant more to us than the rest of the ceremony. Be gentle with your guests. You can enjoy and express your love style without including guests in a non-consensual manner.
Unless you are going to be walking down the aisle naked and chained, almost any wedding photographer with a reputation for quality work will do a good job for your kinky wedding. If you ARE going to be naked, or if a BDSM scene is slated to be a part of your Kinky Wedding, you would, of course, want to discuss this with the photographer before signing the contract.
An alternative to a professional photographer, is to hand out a few (or a few dozen) single-use cameras to your guests. You might want to designate one or two guests to be sure you have the photographic memories you really want to treasure for the rest of your lives. A source for inexpensive single-use cameras is http://www.weddingscenter.com , but you can also find six packs and other case sizes at your local wedding shop. If your kinky wedding is child-friendly, children you have invited make exceptionally great photographers with their very different view of what is really interesting and ‘cool’!
Music
You may not want “Hurts so Good” as your kinky wedding processional. Think about the music you and your love enjoy, about maybe even including a traditional song or two for the ‘vanillas’, but most of all, select music that is special for you and your lover. With the ease of burning your own CDs, make a special Wedding Album of your own! That could even be a great wedding favor. In addition, you could personalize the cover of the CD with a photo of the two (or more) of you, the date and your names. A simple Google search for ‘wedding music’ will turn up thousands of sites to use in your research; pick a couple of them and have at it. One that we really liked is http://www.ultimatewedding.com, and their collection of over 2,000 wedding songs and music, many with sound clips.
The Little (and Not-So-Little) Details
Cake toppers, wedding favors, guest albums, reception decorations� http://www.ultimatewedding.com, http://twobrides.com, http://www.twogrooms.com,
and the books, ‘Weddings by Design’, ‘Ceremonies of the Heart’, and ‘TheEssential Guide to Lesbian and Gay Weddings’, all available at amazon.com.
I can personally vouch for the beautiful and elegant cake toppers from Two Brides! Friends of ours ordered one because it was perfect for their kinky wedding, and it was � perfect! They also had personalized wedding favors, and an adorable guest album that they found at Two Grooms, and this couple made nearly all their own decorations from directions they found at Ultimate Wedding!
You want your special day to be unique, just as the two (or more) of you are unique. Your Kinky Wedding can be filled with the trappings of vanilla weddings, just much more! More intimate, more unique, and more you. Celebrate your Kinky Wedding with grace, style and flair and enjoy the memories for a lifetime!
