What I like about this utterly lovely photo from Karin von Voigtlander Photography:
- I don’t know if the bride is being escorted down the aisle by her grandmother or what, but there is such a touching and obvious warmth flowing between them. How wonderful that such a beautiful gaze is now preserved!
- I found the picture on the photographer’s blog, and as we all know, many if not most photographers’ example shots include only the most stereotypically shapely brides. How nice is it to see a real, she-might-even-be-your-neighbor kind of gal included in the selected snapshots?
Want to give your gram and gramps a role to play on your special day or honor them in some way? Why not:
- Give them corsages and boutonnières that match your wedding colors, setting them apart from your other guests.
- Ask them to give a reading at some point during the ceremony or to participate in a family blending ritual along with other family members.
- Introduce them at the reception, citing how long they’ve been married (if applicable) and how influential they’ve been in your life.
- Include a “grandparents’ dance” in your line-up of planned dances
Did any of you find some special way to include your grandparents in your ceremony or reception? I’m sorry to say that I did not, though I did hold my entire wedding at my paternal grandmother’s home and I gathered that this pleased her very much.
I’d like to include my grandmother, but at 99, she is too frail to travel-she lives in another state. However, I am having a special corsage made and delivered to her.
Only one of my grandparents was still alive when I got married, Nana was treated as one of the wedding party with a corsage and special place at the table with my parents. I wanted to pay homage to all our parents and grandparents, so we got reprints made of all their wedding portraits and framed them in similiar silver frames to be displayed on the cake table. It certainly got a lot of compliments and started a lot of conversations.
I would have done something for the grands when we got married, but alas! we were both out of grands to honor.
That picture gave me a huge smile. It’s exactly what a wedding photo should look like. It captures a moment of love and joy that deserves to be shared with the world.
Aw, how sweet of you, 7nina. I bet she’ll like that a lot!
My religion requires that two witnesses sign the marriage contract…. And I can’t imagine anyone better for that role that my grandparents, who have been happily married for over 60 years!
At our wedding, we (not by request) had one of those anniversary dance things, where married couples get up and dance and you ask them to leave based on how long they’ve been together. Well, my grandparents “won”, and they did say some very lovely things about staying together and making it work, and it was actually very sweet and very touching.
(It was still kind of tacky, though, because my husband’s side of the family is so rife with divorce that no one made it past the 10-year mark in the dance. Besides, only one of his two remaining grandparents even made it to the wedding.)
However, I have a fantastic picture of one of my uncles REALLY dancing it up with my grandmother, and it’s one of my absolute favorite pictures from my wedding. So I guess for me, it’s enough that they were there, but some of my most highlighted memories of my wedding are of them.
This is a “green” tag and your challenge is to provide 3 ways in which you are trying to minimizing your impact on the environment. Then pass it on to five other bloggers.
We honored our grandparents by giving them all corsages and bouts to wear. We also included their names on our programs with our parents and the wedding party.
Since my father is not around anymore to walk me down the aisle, my paternal grandfather will do the honors.
We did a dance of all married couples, with the DJ calling out years married, and one by one, the couples left the dance floor based on the number of years they had been married. Last on the floor (as I sort of selfishly knew they would be) my grandparents, who at the time had been married for 57 years. They got a standing ovation and a special bouquet.
I know someone who arranged for her grandparents, who couldn’t travel to the wedding, to participate via satellite feed. They set up a video screen and camera in the nursing home, and one at the wedding, and the bride got to speak to her grandparents, who watched the whole wedding as it was happening, and grandpa even gave a short speech to all the guests. I don’t know how much it cost to do this, but the bride said it didn’t cost as much as she thought it might.