Styling Your Wedding: Keep the Traditions, Skip the Trends

Planning a traditional wedding is a beautiful way to make certain the nuptials honor both the couple’s heritage and incorporates renowned traditions. But the path to bringing the traditional wedding of your dreams to life isn’t always straightforward.

Fortunately, we’ve come up with a great starter guide. Follow along as we break down the timeless conventions that make up a classic wedding and show you how to sidestep some of the more tacky and short-lived trends.

The Invites

Beautifully printed invitations and thank you cards are part of the building blocks that go into hosting a classically-styled wedding. After all, weddings are important occasions, and designing, addressing and mailing out perfectly assembled invitations shows the time and love you’ve put into this life-changing event.

One trend to bypass, though, is the dreaded email invitations. One might argue they’re more efficient or convenient but emailed invitations are easily lost in crowded inboxes and give off a much more “informal” vibe. There are, however, a variety of elements to think about when you’re designing your invitations, including:

• Background color
• Pricing
• Format
• Printing type
• Style

The Exchange of Wedding Vows

While each religion and culture tend to have their own unique, traditional ceremonies, the act of exchanging marital vows is rooted in wedding lore. Whether vows are taken from Buddhist, Christian or other beliefs, standing in front of family and friends while each partner recites their commitment to one another is one of the most powerful moments of any wedding celebration.

Choose from faith-based or traditional vows that have been passed down from generation to generation in your culture or decide to write your own heartfelt vows. The only thing that can make vows anything less than sacred is you and your partner not being on the same page about which version to go with. You want the vows you recite at your union to be meaningful for both parties, so do some soul-searching before deciding.

The Reception

After the official wedding ceremony is over, the reception is usually the next stop in a traditional celebration. It’s where the newly married pair is introduced, a delicious meal is served and, of course, where cake cutting and dancing are had. But a few time-honored traditions are on their way out, including the garter and bouquet tosses, thanks to their anti-feminist vibes.

And if your goal is to host a timeless affair, you might want to rethink adding the ever-popular bridal party “skits” to your reception, as it can be difficult to make them tasteful or properly execute. Indeed, you don’t want to turn your chic celebration into amateur hour. Instead, focus on the moments that will be lovingly remembered long after your celebration ends, such as your first dance as a married couple and the heartfelt speeches given by the best man and maid-of-honor.

The Timeless Factor

Ultimately, a traditional wedding should marry time-honored practices with bits of purposeful personalization by the couple. But by avoiding throwing in too many in-the-moment trends, you’ll end up with a timeless affair that you can look back on and fall in love with all over again, no matter how many years have passed.