Alternative Weddings and Self-Doubt: Is It Possible to Have a Truly Non-Traditional Wedding?

Do you ever feel that you need to provide a precedent for every decision you make while planning your non-traditional wedding? Even though my wife and I were determined to have an alternative wedding that fit our ethics, we often found ourselves searching for somebody—anybody!—who had already put our plan into action. Maybe you want to use donunts instead of a wedding cake, but then you worry… can it be done? Once you’ve discovered that someone else has already done it, you feel relieved.

Why is this? Shouldn’t a non-traditional wedding be all about doing your own thing? It turns out that the answer is complicated.

Wedding Research Junkies

People planning a wedding become addicted to research, flying through millions of websites, books, and magazines to see what other people have done. If you’re not familiar with the term “wedding porn,” you’re probably already familiar with the idea: people planning weddings LOVE wedding pictures! They want to see everything from every angle—no detail is too small. Before your engagement you may have only glanced through people’s wedding photos on Facebook; now you greedily pour over them.

Of course, we like to research how other people have planned their weddings because it helps us make decisions—whether on choices of colors, decorations, alternative wedding venues, food, music, etc. It’s always helpful to use other people’s experience for inspiration and guidance. (“Ah! I had no idea you could use pinecones for that…”)

Non-traditional weddings and self-doubt

However, we often research other people’s weddings for the opposite reason: we already have ideas, but we want to see if anyone has already tried them. In my experience, this is a dilemma common to those couples planning a non-traditional wedding. We want to do our own thing, but we may be nervous about the outcome. We may not trust our own instincts.

Planning an alternative wedding can be a lonely business. While there are millions of resources available, none of them seem relevant to your vision. No matter how firm your convictions are, it’s easy to get discouraged when you seem to be going it alone. You may start to doubt yourself or ask, “Are we crazy? Can it be done?”

Wedding Traditions New and Old

No matter how badly you want to have a completely unique and ethical wedding, it’s hard to escape the pull of precedent. You could say that a traditional wedding is one defined by precedent—a tradition is just a history of people doing something the same way. Once people have been doing something long enough, it becomes the norm.

Traditions all start somewhere. As Allison writes regarding her decision to wear a red wedding dress, there was no white wedding dress tradition until Queen Victoria popularized it in the nineteenth century. However, once the example was set, many others soon followed suit (or maybe followed dress?)—now it’s considered very unusual to wear anything but white!

Starting your own wedding tradition

For those of us who are attempting to forge our own path—to plan an ethical wedding in accordance with our values—“tradition” can begin to feel like a dirty word. After all, shouldn’t we and not our society dictate how we marry? If you’re feeling frustrated, sometimes you may even feel the temptation to do something just because it’s non-traditional. (“People think we need chairs? We’ll see about that…”)

However, it’s important to remember the fluid nature of tradition. Even when you are being non-traditional, you may be creating a new tradition—one that other people will identify with and adopt. It’s ironic that Queen Victoria may have been the original non-traditional bride when she wore white!

Even non-traditionalists love company…

I think the need for reassurance and precedent stems from the inherently social nature of weddings—they are almost always community events involving family and friends. As I describe in another post, an ethical wedding is one that accords with your values. We can’t help but seek out other people that share their values. Even when we’re planning something as personal as a wedding, we want reassurance that we’re not alone—that our ethics and ideas are not so strange after all.

So don’t feel bad if you find yourself needing reassurance that yes, others have decided to wear a red wedding dress. While the theme of this blog is often “do what you feel like,” it’s also important to remember that the distinction between traditional and non-traditional weddings often disappears in the end.