What a great New Jersey wedding Ceremony!

You want your favorite friends and relatives to be at your wedding ceremony (or you wouldn’t have invited them now, would you?). One of the best and sweetest gifts you can give them is good directions. Downloading them from any one of the popular sites is fine, but before you print and send those babies out, test them. Drive the route and see if it is accurate. Nothing is more frustrating, in so many ways, than getting lost. If key guests (or your photographer, etc), are late, not only will they be flustered, but your time conscious vendors and catering staff will be thrown off as well.
Take the time too, to subtly remind your guests that your ceremony is going to start when you have said it will. The rhythm of a wedding is a fragile and lovely thing that does depend on graceful and appropriate timing.

I know we haven’t posted since last week, but’s June, and we’re going to the beach! (These beautiful pups are residents of Ocean Grove, NJ, and we took the photos just up the street from one of our beach weddings last weekend.)

Or to the park; on Saturday we were at the gracious gardens at Grounds for Sculpture, in Hamilton, NJ. What an awesome site to use as a backdrop.

Or at camp…… My next wedding is at a rustic and wonderful Girl Scout camp in Northern Jersey.

The cool thing about weddings is that you can have them anywhere you want (if you have a New Jersey Wedding Officiant in place….I am so smooth, lol….). I’ve had colleagues that have done weddings in Grand Central Station, in Central Park, and in the McDonalds on 8th and 43d. (It was where they met….) Go with your heart and pick a place you love. If you need suggestions, just call; we have bunches from the rustic to the elegant.

I hope you all had a wonderful holiday, and if you got married today, I hope you acknowledged your dad in a special way, either at the ceremony or reception.

Our histories have so much to do with the people we are today and the couples and families we’ll make, it it always poignant and elegant to thank them in an appropriate way.

Except when it isn’t. Not all our family histories are happy ones, and you should feel empowered to include those family members who have supported you and championed you, and gently gloss over those who have not. Tradition can be nurturing or abusive, and on your wedding day, you should be able to make the call. If there is a chance to make peace before your day, then go for it. If there are family members or friends whose relationship has always been troublesome, don’t include them.

One of my fellow celebrants had what I thought was a great suggestion for a bride who had a difficult relationship with her father. He suggested that before the wedding day, she would make an appointment to talk at a time AFTER the wedding day. This way, he could still be at the wedding (which was very important to him, and I think her as well), but they knew there was an appropriate time to try and sort out the things that were confusing their relationship.

Your wedding day is about celebration, not politics, and you should be as comfortable in the midst of all the happy stress as can be possible. By letting those around you know that they are important and precious to you (but this is not the day to act out), you’ll bring relief to everyone, including yourself; and that is what really is the most important.

No reason to have a full bar when you can offer so many different wines! There are so many ways to have a theme wine bar too; you can pick selections from a region that is dear to you (California, Italy, Spain, Australia). You can pick a selection of those wines that you love. You could even do a “Noah’s ark” and pick wines with animal names on the lables. Add some waters and sodas and you’re done.

Your wedding is next week. You planned to hand watercolor the placecards, make the centerpieces, bake cookies for favors, wash the dog, get a manicure/pedicure/botox/tooth whitening, write your vows and close on a house.

You can’t. Period. Some of those things are details that would be lovely if you had a full staff, but you probably don’t. Take a minute to decide what you can chop off your agenda, and remember that your guests don’t know what you PLANNED to accomplish. They only know that you’ve planned a wonderful wedding with your New Jersey Wedding Officiant (smooth, huh?), a delicious reception, and most importantly, a day that celebrates your joy. That is really all that matters. No one will notice that you didn’t hot glue silk blossoms to the trees….

Your ceremony can have almost anything you want included in the text. I’ve had couples use words from such diverse sources as “The Velveteen Rabbit”, “The Giving Tree”, the Bible, and all sorts of song lyrics, from “West Side Story” to “Rent”. The important thing is that your readings reflect you and your relationship.

If you’d like my list of readings, which includes works by David Sedaris, Anne Lamott, David Rakov and other great writers, please email me. I’d love to share them!

The bouquet, that is. Instead of throwing that baby to the crowd, why don’t you separate single blooms and give them to your female friends and relatives. That way they can all share in the joy of the day.