Weddingbee Blog

The Baconator and I have looked high and low for an appropriate unity ceremony that works for a blended family with 3 pairs of parents. Unity candles kind of worked, but he didn’t love the idea since he’s seen it at so many of his friends’ weddings. Unity sand really only comes in pairs and we could have purchased a second set to break up, but that one didn’t seem to fit since we aren’t getting married on the beach. I threw around the idea of a boxed wine ceremony, but we don’t drink all that much wine. Hand fasting was also out since neither of us have any kind of a discernible Celtic background. So now what? Our families MUST UNITE!

I was flipping through a bridal magazine months ago when something on the table of contents page caught my eye. There was a teeny tiny blurb about incorporating love padlocks into weddings. How to do it wasn’t covered, but I cut out that little photo with it’s caption and pasted it into my wedding inspiration notebook. I remember hearing about the idea when I was in China a number of years ago, but at the time, I had no one to lock away with, so it didn’t really stick with me. But now, four years later, there is something charming and hopelessly romantic about locking together and throwing away the key.

Image via the Google Earth People & Cultures Community

I brainstormed ways to give each person at the wedding a piece of ribbon that would be clasped together with a padlock with our name and date inscribed on it, but that’s an awful lot of ribbon.

Then I downsized it and thought about a piece of ribbon for each family member, but that was nixed because not all of the family is able to attend, and I’d hate to have a wedding lock that’s missing my Nana or his Pap. Then it was further downsized to a piece of ribbon for each of the three sides of the family: my parents’ side, his dad’s side and his mom’s side. This was totally doable but now we’ve lost a lot of the charm of having us all united together in a big way.

Back to the drawing board, right? Then the Baconator said, “Wouldn’t it be dope if we could make a time capsule from our relationship and put it in a box for our kids to open one day when we’re old and forgetful?” Why yes, Baconator, that would be SO dope. But what would we put in the box? Also, isn’t it kind of a shame that we would have to wait so very long to open it up? And what if we lose the key between now and forty years from now?

So we came up with a solution. We are going to lock our rings together for the ring warming ceremony with the same padlock we’re going to use for this wedding time capsule box. Once we finish our vows and unlock our rings for the exchange, we’ll turn our attention to the little wooden box that has been on the table beside us this whole time. We will ask each of our six parents to come forward with a letter to put in the box that we will read on our first anniversary. After they have all added our contribution, we’ll each add a letter of our own that the other hasn’t read yet. Already inside the box will be a couple of photos signifying some of our relationship milestones like our first photo together, our first trip together, the day we got our kitties, the night we got engaged and so on. Once all the letters and photos are safely secured, we’ll lock up the box and each keep a key for safe keeping (my key might be safer kept than his, but then again, maybe we should just give them to our moms). We haven’t quite decided if we’ll each add a letter ever year or what, but I love that we have the possibility to keep the tradition going for the rest of our lives and that we’ll be able to share the journey with our kids one day.

Uncle M will then pronounce us officially married (in less than 20 days!), we’ll smooch and we’ll flounce on out of the ceremony space to the music of the Beach Boys. Guests will go on to cocktails and we’ll get our smiles on for some formal portraits with the whole family.

Did you create a part of your ceremony based on a hodge podge of ideas? How did it turn out?