5 Ideas to Make Your Wedding Day More Meaningful

So, you’re engaged! Yay! It’s a super exciting time, and you now realise how much there is to do in so little time.

You go to your local news agent, and pick up a bridal magazine for inspiration and ideas.

But flicking through the pages, you start to notice something.

You don’t really warm up to what you see. There’s things that they write that doesn’t quite make sense.

You feel that they are all about spending dollars on things that don’t really matter.

You feel that they are trying to follow what’s trendy, which is all well and good, but you don’t really care for being “trendy”.

Everything appears so “perfect” and so pretty. You know that the world isn’t perfect and neither should your wedding. You don’t hold yourself to perfection in anyway shape or form.

All you want is some good old fashioned advice on how you can make your wedding day more like “you” and how to make work for your values, what you really care about and what you should and shouldn’t spend your hard earned money on.

I guess what you’re really after is some inspiration on how things “could” be done differently, as opposed to how they “should” be done.

Hopefully you’ve come to the right place

Well….

Hopefully you’ve come to the right place. Read on and hopefully you’ll get some great ideas

I’ve been a Sydney wedding photographer for over 6 years, and I’ve seen a lot of wedding photography in my time.

I’ve seen weddings of different types, shapes and sizes.

But the ones I’ve been most impressed with is, how they made the wedding all about them, how it reflected their core values as people and how they honoured those around them who they loved and cherish.

It didn’t follow a cookie cutter idea that someone else had in mind.

I love this!! And this I think is how all weddings should be.

All about them. Not about anyone else.

So, in speaking with some of my past clients they gave me some sage advice on how they made their wedding day “theirs”.

They shared with me the things they thought were a great idea, and things that was not.

Follow Who You Are

I guess if i was to give you one piece of advice to begin with, that would be to follow who you are.

Don’t follow the mainstream wedding culture that you “have” to do this because someone else said so.
Find out what’s important to you, and plan your wedding around your core values and your personality.

Whether you want a simple, DIY wedding, or if you want something that’s a bit bigger and glam it’s your choice.

If it doesn’t mean a thing to you, don’t do it

If it doesn’t mean anything to you or your fiancé, then simply don’t do it.

It’s not worth your time, it will probably just add to the budget, and no one will even notice it’s not there!

Some of the most common ones I see when I’m out photographing Sydney weddings are (sorry if this offends anyone!)

For example, order of service cards, elaborate name placeholders, wedding gifts for each person who attended that is not perishable (namely plastic ones that goes into landfill). Wedding invitations that are OTT with little “I’d love to attend” cards you send back.

Ask yourself the question. Does these things mean anything to you? If not, forget the idea and move on.

Spend money on things that matter. Not on things that don’t

Great news. You CAN splurge on things that matter to you.
All on things that will make a difference.
But not on everything!

Ask yourself the question what is most important to you. And go for gold.
Think big picture instead of small niggly details.

If getting the best wedding photographer in Sydney is important to you and you really would love a beautiful wedding album to remember it with, then I completely get that!

If you really wanted that wedding dress you’ve been eyeing for years.
Go for it.

If you really want an awesome band so you and your guests have the best goddamn night of your life. It’s your wedding, just do it!

If you want to spend big on a stunning wedding album that you can have for the rest of your life, you go for it!

But if you think wearing a white dress is a bit old fashioned….then you do something else instead 🙂

Get the idea? Awesome. Let’s keep going….

Ask for help, and delegate

Who in my life would enjoy doing this wedding task in lieu of a wedding present?

It turns out most people would LOVE to help you practically with the wedding rather than buy you a cutlery set that will sit beside
several other cutlery sets you might get and collect dust.

For my wedding one of my best friends is so good at baking cakes, and she loves doing it. So I asked her to make me a grazing station with some of my favourite desserts. Of course I paid her for the things, but she so kindly offered to do it at cost just for me (YAY)

I also had a great friend who plays in a band, so I asked him for a song at my ceremony. (YAY again)

Some really important questions to ask yourself

I’ve put together some questions to ask yourself before committing to anything relating to your Sydney wedding.

Do we really need this?
How does this add meaning to our day?
How does this enrich our relationship?
Can we splurge in some areas whilst going
without in others?

Can we borrow or hire instead of buying, or
sell after the wedding day?
How much of our wedding budget is being
spent on consumables vs things that last?

One Final Note – 5 Ideas to Make Your Wedding Day Meaningful

So, to end this blog post I thought I share a quote one of my clients

“I GUESS WITHOUT THINKING ABOUT IT REALLY WE JUST FORGOT THE WHOLE WORD ‘WEDDING’ AS BEST WE COULD AND REMEMBERED THE DAY WASN’T ABOUT ANYTHING OTHER THAN GETTING MARRIED…WHILE ALL THE EXTRA STUFF IS LOVELY, IT DOESN’T MAKE THE DAY ANY LESS OR ANY MORE IMPORTANT”.

I think this is a great way to finish off.

Hopefully the article gave you some great ideas to make your wedding day more meaningful. I’m pretty passionate about helping people so hit me in the comments section below.

If you like this post, be sure to check out my others here

If you would like to check out another great resource for more inspiration on how to make your wedding more meaningful to you, go to https://lessstuffmoremeaning.org