Wedding Blog

Since we’re getting married outdoors, including a unity candle in the ceremony was pretty much eliminated from the beginning. I do really like the idea of including something to signify that we’re joining our lives, though, and the sand ceremony seems like a great alternative. The idea is that there are three vases (just like the candles)… one symbolizing the bride, the other symbolizing the groom, with the final vase signifying the two of you joined together. To start the ceremony, the groom pours part of his sand into the center vase:

Then the bride follows with some sand from her vase:

And then both of you continue to pour simultaneously until the center vase is full. I’ve seen pictures of couples using funnels created out of paper, where the paper has some words significant to them written on it. Like this:

However, while I love the idea of the ceremony, I was originally turned off by the colored sand. Everytime I look at it I can’t help being reminded of those sand creature things you could buy at Six Flags… does anyone remember those? Anyway, that alone has prevented me from actually ordering the vases. But when I put some thought into it, I came up with what I think is a great solution (if I do say so myself). When I was little we spent time every year on this little island in Florida. There are a lot of great memories from there, 90% of which involved being on the beach. So several years ago, after a family reunion there, I filled two Ziploc bags with soft white sand from that beach and brought it home with me. No clue why I did it, I realize it makes me sound more than a little crazy, but now I am glad that I did! When we were at my parents’ house a few weeks ago I went downstairs and promptly found the shoebox containing my sand…. hooray for never throwing things away!

Mr. Sundae spent nearly all of his childhood summers in the exact place we’ll be having our ceremony, and there just so happens to be a beach there too. The sand from his childhood spot is a perfectly contrasting color of brown. So, for our sand ceremony we’re each going to pour actual sand from our respective childhoods into a vase that we can keep forever. Aside from having to explain why in the world I kept sand in a bag for 10 years, it seems like a good plan.

The pictures above are all from My Divine Wedding, you can have the vases engraved in several different ways. Groom’s initial on one, bride’s on another, combined monogram on the center vase, etc. I opted for just the monogram on the center vase. It hasn’t arrived yet but I’ll be sure to take pictures when it does. Miss Lovebird is also considering a sand ceremony, be sure to check out her post as she has some great alternatives for the vases pictured above… you could really use anything to make it as personal as possible.

Have any of you found an alternative to the unity candle ceremony? Anyone else opting for sand?