Slow weddings - an exploration part 1

Wedding Ideas
Written By Hannah Vincent

Introduction

I was thinking today all about how we talk about slow fashion and slowing down fast fashion and then it got me thinking about how that translates to weddings. Wedding are of course by their nature slower because we usually spend around 18months or more planning one and trends take time to catch on because of that but…. in some ways I think we treat them in a similar way to many of the fast things in life. We consume so much content and ideas about them that we will likely want many of the wonderful things we see and we find ourselves tired from wedding planning and most definitely a bit poorer! So I was thinking, what might a ‘slow’ wedding look like?

Consumption

If we think of slow fashion as consuming less, would a slow wedding sign up to less consumption too? What do we ‘consume’ for a wedding? What are we buying? I suppose for each wedding this list could be bigger or smaller but lets have a quick think about what might be purchased.

  • Venue

  • Registrar

  • Planner

  • Stylist

  • Rings

  • Jewellery

  • Hair accessories

  • Suits

  • Wedding dress/es

  • New undies

  • New shoes

  • Maybe a new getting ready outfit

  • Hen and stag parties/weekends away

  • Hen do/stag do outfits

  • Bridesmaids and/or Groomsmen outfits

  • Flower girls/page boys

  • Guests outfits

  • Hairdresser

  • Make up artist

  • Photographer

  • Videographer

  • Master of ceremonies

  • Bouquets

  • Button holes

  • Ceremony decor or flowers

  • Wedding transport

  • Wedding breakfast table decor

  • Table cloths (if venue/caterer doesn’t provide or you want custom)

  • Napkins (if venue/caterer doesn’t provide or you want custom)

  • Wedding breakfast

  • Wedding cake

  • Welcome drinks

  • Toast drinks

  • Open bar maybe

  • Evening buffet

  • Drinks reception live music and/or entertainment maybe

  • Evening DJ and/or Band

  • Wedding favors

  • Honeymoon

Wow! I don’t know about you but if looked at that list at the start of planning I would feel a tad overwhelmed! Many of these things we think about purchasing along the journey and may not be on the list at the start but when all written down like this it seems quite large. Could it look any different? Smaller? Does smaller mean slower?!

 

Where next with these thoughts?

Right now I think I might be of the mind that slower means less consumption and more creative involvement. But I will continue to explore this idea and see where it leads me.

 

What parts of a wedding could be slow and creative?

This totally depends on your time and skills but aside from big slow projects like making your own wedding dress here are a couple of ideas to engage in the creativity of your wedding instead of just consuming.

 




Hannah Vincent
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5 ways to use creativity to have a slower wedding.
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Sustainability is not a wedding ‘trend’!