Bucking Tradition

It will be no surprise to you that I'm not going to go for a lot of the wedding day traditions. As I've told Mr. T, this is our day, and it should be about us. He wasn't sure if he wanted a ring or not, but felt that he needed one for the "mandatory" ring exchange on the day. I told him, "If you don't want one, don't get one. This is your wedding." Ultimately he decided he'd get a ring, but an inexpensive one, and he'd only wear it sometimes. (I teased him, "You know, women look at men's hands..." He said dryly, "Believe me, they're not beating down my door now, and I don't have a ring." I told him I didn't believe it.)

Here are the things I'm pretty sure we aren't going to do on the day:

• No white dress for me.
• Probably no veil for me (unless I find a fabulous red lace mantilla veil that I must have).
• No diamond ring for me.
  
• No tux for Mr. T.
• No flowers in the reception hall (I'll post about decor later). I will carry a bouquet though, which brings me to...
• No bouquet toss. It's my bouquet, I want it! Also, why humiliate the women at the reception with this horrible game? "Okay, all the losers...I mean single women...come up here and scrabble desperately...I mean try to catch the bouquet." No thanks. My single ladies are gorgeous and fabulous and I love them. I was thinking of having my bouquet made into a painting, actually. I like the idea of keeping it in our household, but in a nontraditional way.
• No garter toss. I actually found a few cute Halloween garters (below), but again, I think it's really in poor taste to have your groom all up in your business while your friends and family watch. WTF?

• Not getting married in a church. We're happy heathens.
  
• Non-traditional officiant. We don't know who will be our officiant, but they will likely be ordained by the Universal Life Church.
• Photos taken before the ceremony. Actually, we haven't officially decided this yet, but I think it's hard on the guests to be left cooling their heels while you're doing a photo shoot. So I'm going to push for a pre-ceremony shoot. My brother and sister-in-law did this and I thought it was brilliant.

And of course there's the most non-traditional part of all of this, which is that we're having a Halloween costume wedding.

We haven't decided what we're going to do about other traditions, such as the first dance. I suggested to Mr. T that we learn the "Thriller" choreography and do that as our first dance. He laughed and started doing the infamous zombie dance part (you know the one), which made me laugh. See? He makes me laugh.

We will definitely have guest favors, but with our own spin on it.

I do like the "something old, new, borrowed, and blue" tradition, so I think I will keep that one. Apparently the original saying ended, "And a sixpence for your shoe" (for luck), but no way am I putting a coin in my shoe. I would like to incorporate a sixpence another way, if I think of a suitable idea.

As I mentioned earlier, I don't mind doing the "cake cutting" with our cupcakes. There will be NO smashing of cake into the face, however. (Mr. T, are you reading this?)

I like the idea of bride and groom gifts--stealing a sweet moment the day of or night before the ceremony to give each other a thoughtful gift. Speaking of that, some of the brides on the blogs have mentioned stealing a little time alone together directly after the ceremony (like 10 minutes or so) to let the impact of being married sink in, and have some alone time, before joining folks at the reception. I like that too.

I'm excited to create something that reflects us! I hope our guests will enjoy it too.