Calling all Wooters...Need some ideas for wedding!

Okay, I saw all the ideas rush forth for the request regarding favors. Now I need some help. I am trying to figure out a way to make my 4.5-year-old son and my fiance’s 11-year-old daughter part of the ceremony. I want them to really feel like it’s their day as well as ours…as it is. Any ideas?

We are also thinking of putting our music playlists together on the MP3 and using that as our DJ…what equipment would I need to make this happen?

Thanks in advance!

I suppose if your culture allows it, you could set up an arranged marriage for them (pending their being old enough to marry in your state). But that seems a bit extreme. 4-1/2 may be old enough for your son to play the part of ring-bearer – be sure to tie the ring to whatever he’s carrying it on. I think I’ve seen girls younger than 11 as flower girls. She’s probably a little young for maid-of-honor duties.

Depending how into this marriage each of the kids is, there are options. If they love the idea, they will work very hard to be creative. It also depends on how much of the ceremony you are creating versus how much you are taking from tradition. If you are writing your own vows and putting in lots of non-trad things (lots of work but very worthwhile) then there is ample room for including your kids in the actual ceremony rather than just adjunct positions. If you really intend to marry your families on this day rather than just the two of you, work them into the actual ceremony and name it a marriage of families. You can talk over time with your son and transcribe his ideas. Come back to him to clarify. Kids can say the most simple and profound things that fit right into the liturgy of a ceremony. The 11 year old could work up her own part with some parameters. Each of you could include a spoken piece welcoming the other’s child into the family, acknowledging the positives they bring to the new family and your joy in being his/her parent–your excitement at helping them grow and your committment to helping them when they are sad or hurt.

Good luck!

You can try asking them what they an important part of the wedding they would be good at doing…

Thanks! I’ll definitely start working on this. I think it’d be great to have a marriage of families in the actual ceremony-I like that.

Any other thoughts would still be great.

I don’t know if you’ve done save the dates and invitations yet, but they could feature the kid’s artwork. If you make them or anything else (gift bags, table favors, etc), then the kids can be involved in the preparation for the wedding in a physical and meaningful way. It will allow them to mentally process what is very difficult for kids–change. Gee, it’s kinda hard for us adults, too. I like to do a physical project to integrate into the mental process of a big event or change.

Enough rambling.

http://forum.allsiemens.com/images/smiles/icon_blahblah.gif

Thanks. I do have the invites done and the save the dates were out a month or so ago. I am doing a big kids activity table though and I did let my son help pick out all the toys and activities…I’ll let them fill all the buckets with the toys and trinkets as well. Then we will cover the table in paper so they can draw all over it during the reception. My fiance really liked the idea of including them in the ceremony…we are going to add the vow to each child.

I think the idea of the “marrying of the families” lessens what the two of you are doing. They are becomming step-siblings, not being married to each other, which was jokingly refered to.
Going the non-traditional route allows you to make each of them a part of the ceremony. have her as the ring bearer and him carry the unity candle, or something similar. My wife and I observed the tradition of hand fasting, where we were actually tied together at the end of the ceremony (hence the “tying the knot”) you could have the boy carry the cord, etc.
As for loading a few playlists onto an ipod and making that your DJ, are you kidding me? Save money on flowers and cake, things people don’t remember and will be thrown out and invest in a good DJ. Make sure they have the songs you like, agree to a “no play list” (YMCA, chicken dance, whatever) and make sure they have lights of some kind. Dancing in the light of a hotel balroom is sooooo boring. Dim the lights and get dancing! Make sure you goto one of their weddings BEFORE hiring them!
deep breath
That’s my 10 cents

Thanks for the input. We are acutally getting married in a park in the early afternoon. I don’t know if it’s the gender thing or just personal prefrence, but I definitley remember the cake and flowers (decorations) more than the music. Don’t get me wrong I love music, but it will be more of a background mood thing than anything else. Do you happen to know where the hand fasting originates from? I guess I could google it…anyways, thanks again.

When my son married his wife, he also had rings for her two daughters, who were 3 and 8.

Poof!!!

Everyone alive and well?

Haveaheart, I want a picture of this wedding!!!

Ohhhh, I’ve got an idea! You can have a picture of the four of you from the back, looking into the sunset or something. that way we wouldn’t see your faces and you can post it.

That’d be a great picture actually…I have a few of my fiance and son walking down the street in Times Square from behind and I love them.

I have a friend who operated a wedding in which the groom rappelled in from the roof while the song You Shook Me All Night Long was playing.

LMAO…that’s great! I’ll have to run that one past the fiance.

congratulatins HaH!

Thanks J3! How are you? Long time no chat…hope things are great in your world!

i’m fairly well… i was sick but i’m better now… still kicking butt in school, though the spring semester was the only time i’ve made dean’s list because of the special consideration they give people who take more than 15 hours in a semester… (every other time was without the special consideration)

That’s what we just did on April 29! Mostly, anyway…

We set up the laptop on a small table and ran a line from the headphone jack to an amplifier, which was in turn connected to the speakers. I think you could probably do that from any old Mp3 player too, but my husband wanted to be sure that everything was played when it was supposed to be played, so he wanted the extra control that the laptop screen offered. (We were married outside, too!)

Also, the music was one of the most important things for both of us – especially him, but for me, too – and that was why we went this route. We didn’t trust somebody else to play songs that we would enjoy, and since we had all of the music on the computer already, it was just a matter of deciding which songs we thought we’d want to hear that day. We put a friend in charge of startingn and stopping the music – an important job, since we even had our ceremony music on there! We had everything separated into clearly labelled folders (pre-ceremony, seating of mothers, bridesmaids, bride’s march, recessional, post-ceremony, reception 1, first dance, reception 2, etc…) so that there would be no confusion.

It worked wonderfully!

Good luck, and congratulations!
: )

Congratulations! And thank you so much for your input, that makes me feel better about doing things this way. We were going to start going over music this weekend and were also leaning towards using a laptop. Thanks again!