10 wedding traditions we put in the bin đđŽ
Hey Spuds, Jamie here, and itâs time to talk traditionâŚor not to tradition?!
You may be aware that weâre not a particularly âtraditionalâ couple đ˛ hahaha. We wanted our wedding to reflect who we are as individuals and as a team, which sounds really obvious when you say it like that, but youâd be surprised how easy it is to get swept up in the âbut thatâs what weddings SHOULD be!â mindset. I canât tell you the number of conversations we had with Shaabaâs mum, it felt like ping pong. âBut you canât be a bride without heels!â, âbut I donât want to wear heelsâ, âbut all brides wear heels!â. Just because something is tradition doesnât mean you HAVE to do it. Weddings are supposed to be fun, and a reflection of you and your loved ones. And if you feel forced into doing something you donât want to do, thatâs a pretty big indicator that thereâs a tradition creeping in that you need to put in the bin.
We wanted to list some of the traditions that didnât feel right for us and that we ultimately ended up doing differently. Sure, it caused the odd raised eyebrow, but it made sense for us and contributed to the best celebrations we could have asked for - and isnât that waaayyyyy more important?! It might be that you love some of those traditions, and if so thatâs great. If you can come away remembering one thing for your wedding plans, itâs to make sure that everything you have planned is being done because you want it to be. Not because tradition says it should be, or not because other people want you to do it.
1. Separate stag and hen
Weâre a very codependent couple. We live together, work together, carry on conversations when weâre showering or going to the toilet (not sure if thatâs TMI but there we go). We spend a lot of time together basically! We also have a lot of the same friends and found ourselves fighting over who weâd want to have on our respective stag and hen guest lists. Shaaba said she loved the idea of doing something quite games-y and collaborative, like an escape room or an obstacle course at Go Ape. I found myself wanting the same thing, and so it made perfect sense for us to have a joint one instead of replicating the same event with the same people twice!
Another huge reason why we wanted a joint event is because the idea of celebrating that last night of âfreedomâ away from one another wasnât the reason we wanted a Stag or a Hen do. We saw it more as a moment to reflective and be present in all those pre-wedding feels, and we knew that we wouldnât have had anywhere near as much fun if we werenât doing that together. Whatâs the point in spending even more money on two events if youâd rather just have the one anyway? And so, the STEN was born! (I wanted to call it a Hag, but there you go.)
We invited a small group of our closest friends and stayed together in a beachside house with a pool. We made pizzas, played games, our friends organised bubble football which was quite the surprise! And we just had a fun chilled time with everyone. Traditionally, Stag and Hen dos focus a lot around phallic puns and lots of alcohol, and whilst willy straws were present, none of us really drink. That meant that for us, our Sten looked very much like a fun sleepover. Movies, mocktails, boardgames and lots of laughs. Weâd personally take that any day over going to a club.
It was the perfect decision for us, and so much more fun to do together.
2. Wedding rings and engagement rings
Traditionally, brides are given an engagement ring, and both the bride and groom get a new ring on the wedding day. We didnât really stick with this from the moment we got engaged. Shaaba felt it was a bit odd that only she got a ring, so whilst I proposed first and gave her a ring, she then bought me a ring too. I was pretty happy with that because I like rings, and will always accept a good present!
Shaaba has always been a bit funny about wearing two rings on one finger though. She loved her engagement ring and the fact that her ring had a diamond on it, and as we spent time looking for wedding bands, both of us felt a little underwhelmed at how plain they were. We briefly discussed the idea of tattoos. Shaaba loved the look of a sticky-out-y diamond, and tattooing rings meant she could still wearing her engagement ring but have something different for the wedding day. This ultimately didnât work out though, as we both werenât in love with a particular tattoo design for it, and felt that it was more important for us to have something to exchange on the day we married than to go to a tattoo studio before or afterwards.
After thinking about it, Shaaba came up with the idea of âupgradingâ her ring instead. She took her engagement ring to a local jeweller who popped the diamond in a simpler (and yellow gold coloured) wedding band, and put a significantly cheaper (literally cost ÂŁ10!) cubic zirconia in the white gold engagement band so that she could still wear it if she wanted to. I also wanted a gold ring to replace my more silver toned engagement ring, but it meant we both had something new to exchange on the wedding day, whilst still resulting in one ring each.
We both still have our engagement rings and theyâll always be special, but this was a great solution that felt right for us.
3. Separating men and women
Like how stag and hen dos are typically separated into men and women, other wedding traditions can be split by gender. One of those is the Mehndi, which is a South Asian pre-ceremony where people put henna on their hands and feed the bride and groom lots of sweet Indian cakes! Shaaba loved the idea of a Mehndi (and so did I), but both of us felt a little uncomfortable with the idea of segregating the men and women, especially as for a lot of our guests, this would be their first experience of an Asian event that can seem very overwhelming if youâre also being separated from the family youâve come with.
We kept all other traditions of the Mehndi, but decided to keep the guest list as one. It was a beautiful event, nobody had anything negative to say about it, and again, we had a lot of fun being able to experience it together with all of our loved ones in a single place.
Gender roles really can be dead if they donât work for you - and even if youâre not having something cultural, like a Mehndi, feeling liberated and free from the constraints of gender labels for your bridesmaids and groomsmen can be super useful! It doesnât matter if you have a best man or a best woman, as long as the loved one that you choose can be the most supportive during whatâs a fun, but also very overwhelming day!
4. The bells and whistles of the lead up
Donât get me wrong, I love a good accessory and so does Shaaba, but they often come with a hefty price tag! In our wedding planning adventures there seemed to be a lot of pressure to indulge in these accessories, from targeted ads on social media, to wedding stalls, to family expectations that gifts will be given at every turn - and boy was there a lot of choice. Did you know you can get bridesmaid dressing gowns with names and bridesmaid roles embroidered on the back? And eye masks, and bottles, and tote bags, and denim jackets, and hangers, and sooooo many more things. The same goes for the more âmanlyâ apparel. Tankards, ties, cufflinks, socks, watch straps, even pants! You name it, theyâve customised it.
A personalised element or two can be really fun, and show your close loved ones that you appreciate their help throughout your nuptials, of course. But they can also make you max out your budget, seem wasteful environmentally, and risk being a bunch of tat that people may never use again. We donât want to come across as judgy in this post at all, but want to emphasise that thereâs no point in spending all of that money on 5 customised satin dressing gowns for one Instagram picture. Thereâs so much more to a wedding than that, and the reality is that on the wedding day after we had decided not to buy lots of personalised merch, we wouldnât have noticed if weâd had any of that stuff. All of the emotions and the excitement of the plans ahead were more than enough, I didnât pay any attention to the hanger my suit was on, and Shaaba didnât think twice about the glass she drank out of that morning.
A lot of this stuff exists because companies have realised they can make a quick buck from anything if they slap the word wedding on it, so donât be fooled. Unless itâs really important to you, thatâs some extra pocket money you can save towards your honeymoon!
5. The groom/bride canât come to the dress/suit fitting
I want to preface this with the fact that I didnât see Shaabaâs actual wedding dress until the wedding day - that was a traditional moment I personally was keen on. See, itâs totally okay to want to preserve tradition, as long as itâs done on your grounds! I wanted that first look moment and surprise on the day, and it was as special as I expected it to be.
We did however, still do the dress and suit try ons together. It was important to Shaaba for me to be there as she felt very overwhelmed with the idea of a wedding dress, and we knew that there was the potential for her mum and sisters to go a bit overboard with their opinions (not in any mean way, just out of excitement!). So we came on with a plan: Shaaba would try on a dress behind the curtain, and if it had the potential of being âthe oneâ, Iâd leave the room for a bit whilst she showed everyone else. It was lovely to share that moment together, get a glimpse of what our outfits would look like for the wedding day, and to share our opinions with each other. Shaaba also joined me for my suit choices. She saw me try on different sizes, pick out the colours, decide if it would be a 2-piece of a 3-piece, and pick out all the little details.
We kept some surprise for the day whilst still being involved with each others outfit choices, which was the perfect balance for us.
6. Having a âbride sideâ and âgroom sideâ on the day
This was a really big one for both of us as neither of us liked the idea of segregated ceremony seating and table plans by family. We were coming together as one united force, and we wanted both of our families and out friends to come together too. I also have a much smaller family than Shaaba, so practically it worked much better to mix everything up, and we really wanted to encourage our families to blend together and get to know each other. It was something we didnât realise would be so special, but seeing all of our loved ones from all different walks of our lives be under one roof was really cool!
Choosing not to segregate by bride and groom also helped with the fact that Shaaba has divorced parents - things seem significantly trickier when the mum and dad first dance is being split between five people instead of four! We reserved some seating at the front of the ceremony for closest family, but this was mixed between our different families and our friends. We then allowed guests to choose where they sat with a little sign that said âchoose a seat, not a side, weâre all family once the knot it tied!â.
It worked really well, and since the wedding, itâs been so lovely to speak to loved ones about other people they met at the wedding because they happened to be sitting in the same ceremony row or dinner table.
7. Only the men doing speeches
No, this wasnât because I was super nervous about doing a speech! We both found it a little strange that traditionally only the men speak at weddings. Itâs normally the father of the bride, the best man, and the groom, and this stems from the idea of women being âownedâ and men being the only people worth listening to. That was never the vibe that we wanted, and not only did I feel it was important to share the microphone (and nerves!) when we spoke to our loved ones for the first time as husband and wife (omg), we also wanted the absolute powerhouses that were our mums and stepmums to be able to speak too.
We therefore decided to do a joint speech ourselves. Shaabaâs maid of honour, Lucy, game a toast and introduced the speech givers, and we didnât have a best man. My mum and dad did their speech together, so did Shaabaâs dad and stepmum, and Shaabaâs mum gave a speech too. It felt right to do it this way, and was a great reflection of how we all operate as couples too.
8. The head table
People tell you that guest management is the most stressful part of any wedding planning, and theyâre not wrong. Shaaba and I naively went into the process thinking ânah, weâre not going to find this stressful if we just do what we want!â, but itâs never that easy. The biggest stresses we felt were logistically making sure our loved ones felt they were being treated special enough whilst still being comfortable, if that makes sense. The top table seemed to be the boss battle of stresses in this context! Typically, the head table is the bride and groom, their parents, and the best man and maid of honour. We had three sets of parents, two of which didnât particularly get on. Weâve also been to weddings where Iâve been separated from Shaaba because I had to be on a different table, and it wasnât as fun, so we didnât want to put that on any of our guests. But that also meant having Shaabaâs maid of honour and her partner. But as her partner was a groomsmen, should the other groomsmen be up there? And what about the two younger kids of Shaabaâs dad and stepmum, they wouldnât enjoy dinner without their parents so they should be there too, right? The arrangement and size of a head table just kept getting bigger and bigger!
In the end, we decided that having a sweetheart table which was just the of us was best, and it really did work a treat. The day is so overwhelming and full of lots of people, that it felt nice to have that mealtime to chat just the two of us. It also gave our parents the nice sense of hosting to host their respective âsub-head tablesâ, and gave us the flexibility of popping over and visiting everyone we wanted to between courses! We could see all of the guests, wave at people, and have a bit of a breather too, without all the family politics of people being offended that they werenât at the very front. Success!
9. Photography for the groom
This one might sound a bit big-headed, but being very honest, I wanted someone to follow me around to take photos whilst I was getting ready too! Quite often, wedding days are seen as the brideâs big moment. The big dress, the make up, the jewellery. And yes, Shaaba absolutely looked stunning, but wanted to make sure that I felt just as important. A lot of other wedding photos weâd seen had a bunch of bridal prep photographs, but nothing of the groom until the ceremony. But it was important to both of us to have photographs that told the story of the day for both of us, starting from before we were together (as spending the night apart was a tradition we decided we wanted to keep).
It was such a lovely decision - and spoiler - it was really cool to see the photos in order of timestamps, to see exactly what we were each doing at certain moments of the day! We could see that when I was putting my tie on, Shaaba was reading a letter Iâd given to her. And when she was getting into her dress, I was greeting one of our guests who also happened to be the dress supplier! Weâve both ended up with individual shots from the morning and photoâs with our parents and friends from before the ceremony. This also gave us a really cute moment when we got the photoâs back to walk each other through how our mornings had gone before we saw each other, and relive the feels all over again. Weâd of course given each other the full rundown as soon as we left the wedding reception, but it was super cool to see the photos that captured the emotions of the moments.
A wedding is also between two people, and it was no more or less important or exciting to either of us. For that reason, it felt important that we had equal roles and representation on the day.
10. No gifts or gift list
And finally, the gifts. I guess the tradition is that couples would get gifts to set them up on their new married life living together. Shaaba always loved the idea of walking round a huge department store with one of those scanners beeping everything we liked and hoping that someone would buy a set of tiny little forks. As adorable as that image is, by the time Shaaba and I were getting married, weâd been living together for nearly a decade. we had no need for cutlery or a fondue set, because we already had most of the things youâd see on a wedding list!
Weddings are also super expensive to host, but also to attend, and we didnât want people to feel like they had to get us anything. So we decided on letting guests know that their presence was all that was required, and knowing that many would feel like they wanted to give something, we suggested that if they wanted to bring anything, a small monetary contribution to our honeymoon or to a charity initiative they cared about would be lovely (but not at all necessary). This worked out great as most gifts gave us honeymoon contributions that meant we were in the Bahamas buying coconuts to drink and thinking âthank you [insert guest name here] for this wonderful coconut! It was very fun, and meant that when we shared the news with our guests afterwards, they really felt like theyâd contributed to our wedding story in a meaningful way.
So there you have it, some wedding traditions we decided to put in the bin! Interestingly, there were more traditions that we loved and wanted to embrace than we thought. But at the end of the day, it doesnât matter if the origin of the act is something millions of people have done before, or something thatâs completely new. All that matters is that it works for you :)
All the best with your wedding planning! đ
Photography by Mini & Me Photography and Pinky Promise Photography