What I Want For My Non-Traditional Wedding

Who else is planning a wedding right now?! I am truly so excited to plan a dreamy, intimate wedding with my closest friends and family and celebrate marrying my favorite person on the planet! But, I’m definitely not going with the traditional approach for my wedding.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been looking forward to being engaged and planning a wedding for a while now, but I’m also super glad that I’ve had time to learn more about what I really want and what is going to make me and my fiancé have the wedding day of our dreams (well, my dreams since he doesn’t actually care lol).


Here are my top priorities so far -

Small & Intimate

So now that we’ve written out a guest list, I suppose it isn’t super small, but we have a list of 65 close friends and family that we’re planning to invite. We focused on our immediate family, close extended family, lifelong friends, and we each have 1-2 super close co-workers. One thing we considered to make our list even smaller is to make our wedding kid-free. We decided against it, not wanting to upset or inconvenience any of our guests, but I’m curious if this is this is more common than we think and perhaps our guests wouldn’t mind? If you have a helpful opinion, please share it over on Instagram!

Romantic & Dreamy

My vision is something outdoors with an incredible view! We both really love the idea of getting married at a lake or somewhere in the mountains. Think super green and lush, body of water, and just overall peaceful. A waterfall would be great. That’s not asking for too much, right?

Sunset Ceremony with Lights & Candles

By having the ceremony at sunset we think we would add to the romance and make the experience even more unique to us. We both love a good light wrapped tree, so expect lots of that along with candle lit aisles and table centerpieces. My only concern with a sunset wedding is that we won't have a lot of time for high-quality photos. So before locking in the time with the venue, I'll need to speak with our photographer (which we don’t have yet).

Candid Photos

Speaking of photography, we aren’t big staged photo people. In fact, I wouldn’t consider either of us to be big photo people at all (also why you hardly see my face here or on Instagram). However, I do want to remember this day for the rest of our lives and be able to revisit the memories through photos. My plan as of now is to take a couple of photos with our family, but to have our photographer focus primarily on capturing raw emotion and moments - like my mom’s face when she first sees me walking down the aisle, dancing with my siblings on the dance floor, or Ryan laughing at something silly his dad says. Those feelings are what I want to remember forever and see displayed throughout our home. No pressure for our photographer, at all.

Non-Traditional

Honestly, I haven’t been to a ton of weddings so I don’t even know all of the traditions. But I know we aren’t planning to have a wedding party, formal rehearsal dinner (we’re thinking send-off brunch instead), or anything father-daughter related. I found myself trying to make those things work because I know that’s what is normal, but then I realized - why? If it’s not important to us, we just aren’t doing it.

Guests in Black

I always feel like I look my best in black, and I know a lot of people feel the same (especially women). It’s flattering, elegant, and timeless. I think having an all-black dress code will add to the romantic nature of the wedding and it’ll look awesome in photos (I’m thinking lots of black and white versions)!

Wedding Weekend Retreat

Since we don’t live near our family, literally every one of our guests will be traveling to attend our wedding - so why not make it a fun weekend retreat for all?! I would love to find an affordable weekend getaway spot that also has water and mountain views (and a waterfall), where our guests can kick back and relax or take part in golfing, hiking, or another fun activity. I realize I am dreaming BIG here, but if you shoot for the moon and land on the stars that’s still great, right?

Coop Involved

Our dog will be a part of the big day and weekend just like he’s a big part of our lives every other day. Plus just thinking of Cooper sitting next to Ryan while I walk down the aisle melts my heart. And he will be wearing a baby blue bow tie (Ryan’s favorite color).

Fur Blankets for Guests

We are thinking November for our wedding because this is a time when we like to get away for a quick vacation every year, and I think being mindful of our future anniversaries should be considered just as much as the wedding day itself. However, this certainly hasn’t always been my vision so my Pinterest wedding board that I’ve been building since high school just went out the window. The one idea that I loved and plan to actually use is to have a chalk sign that reads “to have and to hold and in case you get cold”. Next to ours will be a wicker basket of fur blankets that people can wrap around them and their all black attire. I think it will function great and look lovely.


So first stop, let’s pick a venue! I’ll keep you guys posted along the way with pictures and videos so be sure to follow along on my Instagram @housesandblouses.

Follow me on Pinterest for more ideas and inspiration!

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