Weddings are relatively rare events. They (ideally) only happen once in a couple’s lifetime, and attendees can’t be expected to inherently know the ins and outs of a wedding ceremony
Purchasing a ring, whether for an engagement or a wedding, is a big step: an age-old symbol of commitment and union. But the commerce of it, the industry, brings with it a heap of considerations.
As you'll know if you paid attention in high school English, Shakespearean comedies all end in a wedding. Weddings, so full of hope and effusive emotion, seem to be the only logical conclusion to the farce and blunders of these comic heroes.
Perhaps you’ve seen the movie or that scene from Roots and are familiar with the tradition of a couple jumping over a broomstick at the end of a wedding ceremony, without fully understanding the history.
It’s tricky to find the balance: to plan a wedding that feels traditionally legitimate and steeped in ritual, drawing on all those romantic movies we grew up loving, without reinforcing the antiquated gender roles that informed them.
Interfaith marriages have been on the rise for decades. Recent data indicates that more than 30% of couples married in the last decade are of different faith backgrounds. That's nearly a 2x increase from the approximately 16% of couples in mixed faith marriages before 1972.
These days, you can really get married anywhere. Just ask the couple who said “I do,” on the ocean floor or the one who enjoyed the first zero-gravity wedding. One New Hampshire based couple, amid the pandemic slew of Zoom ceremonies, even decided to get hitched in the metaverse.
What makes a wedding ceremony meaningful? We’ve spent some time thinking about this question — reflecting on our own experiences, talking to accomplished officiants, and consulting experts on ritual design.
For nearly a decade, trend pieces have been published with some regularity on the rise of male engagement rings. Nonetheless, by and large, they’ve yet to break into the mainstream. Despite high profile celebrities like Ed Sheeran and Prince Harry adopting the progressive practice, a 2020 study showed that only 5% of men are choosing to wear engagement rings, nodding to stagnant gender norms within cis-heterosexual wedding culture.
Providing an offering of bread is a timeless gesture, a ritual of hospitality going back thousands of years. It's easy to spot a common version of this even today when you sit down at a restaurant and receive a basket of bread at the table.
Despite significant strides forward in contemporary wedding culture, the prevailing narrative remains that it should be one of the “biggest days” of a couple’s life. One of the downsides to this narrative, beyond the immense financial cost, is that it often yields a punishing carbon footprint. In 2017, Stanford Magazine reported that the average *non-*destination wedding of 200 guests produces about 56 tons of carbon emissions — about three times the average American’s annual footprint. With more and more couples today choosing to have destination weddings, that figure has only increased to accommodate round trip domestic or international flights, car rentals, and buses to and from venues.
There's plenty of reasons why people get married. A wedding ceremony can go many different directions to highlight purpose and make the moment memorable.
It’s always the same in the movies. He gets down on one knee, usually in some public spot in front of a lake or fountain, and opens a ring box — revealing the most spectacular diamond she’s ever seen.
%2520to%2520Purchase%2520Carbon%2520Offsets%2520for%2520Your%2520Wedding.avif)
